SCALE, ROTATE,

[Muhammed Taş]

Going to the edges to make an object smaller is ridiculous. Instead, it would be easier to directly shrink the example by pressing s or another command key. Like blender.

[loukash]

7 minutes ago, Muhammed taş said:

the example

^ That's a good keyword:
Can you please post an example of what you have in mind?
(The last time I tried to use Blender must have been about 20 years ago after it went open source, so pardon my ignorance…)

[Muhammed Taş]

Sorry, I'm answering using translate. Please excuse me if the translation is incomplete. To make an object smaller in Adobe Illustrator, we do not move the mouse to the corners of the shape. When we press the S key, the scale tool comes directly. We move the mouse slightly and the object becomes smaller. Likewise, the rotation tool works this way.

[loukash]

8 minutes ago, Muhammed taş said:

Sorry, I'm answering using translate. Please excuse me if the translation is incomplete.

Oh I see. No problem!  

1 minute ago, Muhammed taş said:

To make an object smaller in Adobe Illustrator, we do not move the mouse to the corners of the shape. When we press the S key, the scale tool comes directly.

OK, that's what I thought but I wasn't 100% sure.

To be honest, after working with Illustrator & co for literally decades, personally I'm pretty happy with the Affinity solution not having dozens of unique tools for each small task I want to perform. Affinity tools are contextually aware, and that's a feature, not a flaw.  

For example, if you have zoomed in so that you cannot see the contextual variants of the Move tool that appear at the bounding box edges and corners of the object you're editing, you can simply go to View menu → New View which opens your canvas in a new tab where you can watch and edit the object as a whole while zoomed out. The original view remains in your first tab untouched, so you can easily switch back and forth.
Also, in the Navigator panel you can save current viewpoints and then switch back and forth between a zoomed in and zoomed out view.
This is not exactly what you're asking for but that's how the Affinity workflow works. It is not meant to be a clone of (partially flawed) Adobe workflows.

[Bit Disappointed]

1 hour ago, Muhammed taş said:

Sorry, I'm answering using translate. Please excuse me if the translation is incomplete. To make an object smaller in Adobe Illustrator, we do not move the mouse to the corners of the shape. When we press the S key, the scale tool comes directly. We move the mouse slightly and the object becomes smaller. Likewise, the rotation tool works this way.

What you're missing are of course Illustrator's scale, reflect, rotate tools (which you may have in muscle memory) and I must admit that Illustrator's scale tool for some types of scaling of whole objects is much, much faster to use. Both Illustrator and Blender have shortcuts for certain types of workflows where some operations are performed many, many times and where the graphic designer needs to not waste time.

These workflows can take longer in Affinity, which is much more traditional in its user interface. 

On the other hand, you may be able to use the Point Transform Tool (shortcut F).

[Bit Disappointed]

For your information:

 

[JET_Affinity]

19 hours ago, Bit Arts said:

What you're missing are of course Illustrator's scale, reflect, rotate tools…

Right. Bounding box based transformations—as opposed to transform tools—is one of the main interface elements that make Affinity apps seem more 'amateurish' than they really are.

I've said it before and will continue to do so at every opportunity: Bounding box handles being the only tactile (mousedown and drag) interface for basic transformations is sub-standard. Bounding box corners and side midpoints very often have nothing whatsoever to do with the portion of the artwork being transformed. We need to be able, for example, to scale a selection in any direction needed; not just in the often irrelevant directions of the selection's bounding box sides relative to the infernal page edges.

This is why—so long as Affinity is going to cling to only bounding-box based transforms—it should at least make one of the absurdly redundant five bounding box rotation handles able to rotate the bounding box around its content, so as to 'aim' the scale handles in whatever direction needed.

JET

[loukash]

(ignore, I misread the post )

Edited December 9, 2023 by loukash

[loukash]

9 minutes ago, loukash said:

(ignore, I misread the post )

Hm… on a closer second look, turns out that I didn't. So I'll post it again:

2 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

We need to be able, for example, to scale a selection in any direction needed

And you can.
Those are your options while the Move tool active:

1. Enable Transform Origin and place it wherever you want
2. hold [Cmd] "to resize around the center" (where "center" = Transform Origin)
3. voilà

With the Node tool active, first you need to activate the Transform Mode and make a selection of nodes, the rest is then the same.

Edited December 9, 2023 by loukash

[JET_Affinity]

54 minutes ago, loukash said:

And you can.
Those are your options while the Move tool active:

1. Enable Transform Origin and place it wherever you want
2. hold [Cmd] "to resize around the center" (where "center" = Transform Origin)
3. voilà

With the Node tool active, first you need to activate the Transform Mode and make a selection of nodes, the rest is then the same.

Edited 34 minutes ago by loukash

Loukash,

You are misreading me. What you describe is not at all the same as scaling the selection only in the direction desired, like the scale handles on the sides of a bounding box do.

1. Draw a square. Convert it to paths.

2. Draw an arbitrary diagonal line across the square.

3. Scale the square in the direction of the diagonal line only; in other words, without also changing its dimension in the direction perpendicular to the diagonal (disproportional scaling, like dragging a bounding box side handle does).

JET

[fde101]

On 12/8/2023 at 2:17 PM, Bit Arts said:

On the other hand, you may be able to use the Point Transform Tool (shortcut F)

In its current form, this does not solve the problem presented.  For this to be relevant there would need to be a button on the toolbar (for example) and (ideally) some shortcut to disable moving the object, and instead causing it to transform based on the handle closest to the mouse position when you dragged over the object in a place where it currently moves it.

 

On 12/9/2023 at 11:05 AM, JET_Affinity said:

it should at least make one of the absurdly redundant five bounding box rotation handles able to rotate the bounding box around its content

An option to freely transform the bounding box without transforming the object it represents would be interesting, but I'm not sure how that is relevant here either.

 

On 12/8/2023 at 12:35 PM, loukash said:

personally I'm pretty happy with the Affinity solution not having dozens of unique tools for each small task I want to perform

Agreed.

 

On 12/8/2023 at 11:31 AM, Muhammed taş said:

it would be easier to directly shrink the example by pressing s or another command key

Holding down a letter which is assigned to a tool (in this case the Shape Builder tool) temporarily switches to that tool.  In order for this to work they would need to be independent tools which is not how the Affinity products tend to roll - they generally gravitate toward fewer tools with each being able to do more.