Changing Measuring tool

[Patrick M]

How can I change the measuring tool from feet to meters, when creating a floor plan. I would like to be able to go back and forth between the two. Right now I have 1:6ft. I believe 6' would then read 1.83m when changed to metric. 

[Komatös]

Hi @Patrick M

The only and quickest way, without having to go to the document settings, is to right-click on the connecting corner between the horizontal and vertical ruler.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Komatös said:

The only and quickest way, without having to go to the document settings, is to right-click on the connecting corner between the horizontal and vertical ruler.

That will change the measuring unit, but from Patrick's mention of "1:6" I think that a Scaled document is in use, and I haven't tried adjusting the Unit of Measure using the rulers when Scaling is in use. I'm not sure what will happen; something to play with later  

[Komatös]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That will change the measuring unit, but from Patrick's mention of "1:6" I think that a Scaled document is in use, and I haven't tried adjusting the Unit of Measure using the rulers when Scaling is in use. I'm not sure what will happen; something to play with later  

 

10 hours ago, Patrick M said:

How can I change the measuring tool from feet to meters

Sounds like swapping the unit of measurement from inch to mm to me!

 

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Komatös said:

Sounds like swapping the unit of measurement from inch to mm to me!

Except for the "1:6" which sounds like Scaling: https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/GetStarted/drawingScale.html

[Patrick M]

Thanks for the support. I tried right clicking on the horizontal ruler, nothing happens. I have a MacBook Pro, with track pad, which may work differently than Windows.

The scaling I used to create the floor plan in Design 2, was 1": 1ft, and I change the 1ft to 6ft. It was set up 1in : 6ft in the Drawing scale. I set the measure tool to 10' first.  

I went in to the Document settings, and changed the units to meters. Then changed the measure tool from 1:1 to 1:72. That made the correct calculation for 10ft to 3.048m. It now shows the correct scale. It would be nice if there was an easier way the program calculated the scale from the ft to Mts. 

The only other question, and this is a different subject, how do you rotate the document 90 degrees. I only see the option to rotate left or right, which takes 6 moves to rotate 90. Photo Affinity has the option to rotate 90 degrees clockwise or counter clockwise. 

 

[GarryP]

21 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

The only other question, and this is a different subject, how do you rotate the document 90 degrees. I only see the option to rotate left or right, which takes 6 moves to rotate 90. Photo Affinity has the option to rotate 90 degrees clockwise or counter clockwise.

Photo has a Document menu (containing the Rotate by 90 degrees functionalities, amongst other things) which Designer doesn’t have.
The concept of a document in Photo is different to the concept of a document in Designer because they’re designed to work in different ways.

In Designer, if you are not using Artboards then I don’t think there’s a quick way to rotate the document by 90 degrees, except for setting up a keyboard shortcut and pressing it a few times.

One ‘work-around’, which I think only works on Windows because of a difference between the OS implementations, is to use the Artboard Tool to create an Artboard for the document, then rotate the Artboard via the Transform Panel (make sure that Lock Children is OFF on the Context Toolbar), then delete the Artboard while keeping the layers within it. It’s no quicker than quickly rotating a few times but it might come in useful at some point.

If you are using Artboards then you can simply rotate the artboard (making sure the Lock Children is OFF).

Alternatively, if you have Publisher then you can use the Photo Persona of that application to rotate the document, but that’s only quicker if you are already working in Publisher.

[walt.farrell]

58 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

I tried right clicking on the horizontal ruler,

Don't click "on the ruler," but "on the Unit of Measurement at the intersection of the rulers".

[Patrick M]

I am new to Designer 2. I have been using Affinity Photo for years, and I understand both have their different advantages. I first created the new document as an A3 document. Later discovering I can use Arch 3. I assume this is an Art Board, or how do I know if it is Art Board? 

I clicked on the Unit of Measurement at the intersection of the ruler, but there was no option to change to meters. 

[GarryP]

15 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

Later discovering I can use Arch 3. I assume this is an Art Board, or how do I know if it is Art Board?

I don’t know what “Arch 3” is, or where it is.

There are some document Presets starting with “Arch” (for architectural documents) but they are presets for document set-ups, where you can specify if you want to use an Artboard or not, but they are not Artboards in and of themselves.

To create a document which contains an Artboard you can tick the “Create artboard” option in the New Document dialog.
To create a new Artboard you can use the Artboard Tool.

You might want to read the Help and look at some videos about using Artboards to get more information on them.

[thomaso]

45 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

I clicked on the Unit of Measurement at the intersection of the ruler, but there was no option to change to meters. 

Right-click :  

[Patrick M]

I guess I am not follow you, "Create Artboards". When I open File/ New Document,  I have the options to choose: Print, Press Ready, Photo, Web, Devises (iPad,...) , Architectural. Print includes the different paper sizes. I do not see any option Create Art Boards.

There are the options under New, which are open, recent, templates, samples. I believe all of these are within the Art Board, since I have all the tools on the left side.

There is an Art Board tool, 2nd tool down. 

[Pšenda]

3 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

I do not see any option Create Art Boards.

https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/GetStarted/NewDocument.html

[Patrick M]

Thank you very much. Now I see the option for Create Artboard.

If I did not choose this option in the beginning, which I did not, what tools or options am I loosing? I guess my question is the difference in Create Art Board or not creating art board. 

[Pšenda]

1 minute ago, Patrick M said:

I guess my question is the difference in Create Art Board or not creating art board. 

https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/Artboards/artboards_about.html

[Patrick M]

Perfect. Thank you for the link. 

[Pšenda]

4 minutes ago, Patrick M said:

Thank you for the link. 

Alternatively, a useful article on affinityspotlight.com
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/artboards-explained/