snap to object or point while rotating

[studiotomi]

Is it possible to snap to points or objects when rotating an object? 

[A_B_C]

Hi studiotomi,

 

and welcome here …  :)

 

As far as I can see, snapping is disabled while rotating an object. That means, for instance, you cannot snap the corner of a rectangle to a guide by rotating the rectangle against the guide. But it would be helpful, if you give some more details about what you want to achieve. Maybe there is a simple solution …

 

Thanks, Alex  :)

[studiotomi]

There are two instances in particular where I need to be able to do this.

 

First, I have a set of objects, that are in a line, that I need to rotate to an arbitrary/unknown angle.  In the graphic below, I need to get the circles rotated around the bottom right corner such that their center point is on the dashed red line.

 

Second, I layout designs to be cut on a laser cutter, so often I need to know the length of an arbitrary line(usually the diagonal of a rectangle), so that I can craft other parts to match them.   To measure them, I rotate it to either 0 or 90 and take a look at the object properties.  Yes I could use good ole pythagoras' theorem, but I'd rather not have to pop out of the program, if possible

[A_B_C]

Thanks for detailing this …  :)

 

I fear the current implementation of the snapping system does not allow you to snap the group of circles to the diagonal by rotating the group around the bottom right corner. And unfortunately, similar limitations apply to the second case. You can snap the rotation centre of the diagonal to the bottom right corner of the rectangle and rotate the rectangle around this corner, but you cannot snap the path that forms the diagonal to a vertical guideline, for example. Currently there are also no other geometrical methods available, like drawing a circle around the bottom left corner of the rectangle and snapping the circumference to the diagonal. So I fear you will have to do the math in both cases.

 

But there is a glimmer of hope. Snapping improvements are coming to the next iteration of Affinity Designer, and I believe (or at least I dearly hope) that Euclidean constructions will be supported by the improved snapping system. That would give us great options for constructions like the ones you mentioned.

 

In addition, I would like to point to the fact that Affinity Designer is able to perform quite tricky mathematical operations. Some aspects of the syntax have been detailed in these threads:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18638-units/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/2321-scaling-objects-by-a-percentage/

 

Hope that helps in any way …  :)

Alex