Contour Tool could be more accurate

[Darner]

Hi

Have noticed some small inaccurate issues. For example with logo design, this can be less fortunate.
Familiar with workarounds like setting a size after using Contour Tool etc, but still thought worth mentioning.

- Contour Tool not snapping to other shapes.
- Adding 3 mm with Contour Tool on a 1 cm shape, is not always same as another 1,3 cm shape. Which means when dragging, the size can change a bit even though the measurement doesn't.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Darner said:

Adding 3 mm with Contour Tool on a 1 cm shape, is not always same as another 1,3 cm shape. Which means when dragging, the size can change a bit even though the measurement doesn't

Perhaps you need to specify more decimal places for the display of mm dimensions? Application Settings (or Preferences, depending on OS), User Interface.

Or can you provide a sample Affinity file that demonstrates the problem?

[Darner]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Perhaps you need to specify more decimal places for the display of mm dimensions? Application Settings (or Preferences, depending on OS), User Interface.

Or can you provide a sample Affinity file that demonstrates the problem?

Thanks for the feedback Walt.
Setting extra decimal in settings may help a bit on seing the numbers. 
Be nice if 1 mm was 1 mm, and not "almost 1 mm", in Affinity Designer with one decimal.
And adding snapping to Contour Tool would make a nice difference for next update.

But it was a nice detail you shared. Thank you.

 

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Darner said:

Be nice if 1 mm was 1 mm, and not "almost 1 mm", in Affinity Designer with one decimal.

With only 1 decimal point, 1 mm is somewhere between .95 mm (which rounds up to 1) and 1.049999 mm (which rounds down to 1). If you're setting the value by dragging rather than by typing it into a field, you really can't be sure what you have.

[NathanC]

16 hours ago, Darner said:

- Contour Tool not snapping to other shapes.

This is more of a feature request to enable the contour tool to honour snapping rules when adjusting the radius rather than a bug with it's existing functionality, so I've moved this to the appropriate section of the forums.

[Darner]

7 hours ago, NathanC said:

This is more of a feature request to enable the contour tool to honour snapping rules when adjusting the radius rather than a bug with it's existing functionality, so I've moved this to the appropriate section of the forums.

Thank you for the feedback Nathan.
As of the snapping issue. was referring to both snapping to other shape, which might fall more under feature.
But also snapping to the actual given metric measure, and not somewhere "in between".
As in it would perhaps be better if it snaps / rounds up to each whole mm / cm / px, or decimals if that is added in the settings like Walter was mentioning. As of now, a Contour shape of 1 mm / cm does not always equals another shape of 1 mm / cm:)

[Aammppaa]

9 hours ago, Darner said:

As of now, a Contour shape of 1 mm / cm does not always equals another shape of 1 mm / cm

Can you show an example of this, where a Contour does not match the dimensions of a non-contoured object?

I've tried adding contours to various shapes, and they are always precisely the size I specify.

[Darner]

16 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

Can you show an example of this, where a Contour does not match the dimensions of a non-contoured object?

I've tried adding contours to various shapes, and they are always precisely the size I specify.

Thank you for looking into it.

You might didn't see the issue if you didn't zoom.
Attached is a video.

The issue is not only for Contour Tool, but also for dragging out shapes without typing in specific value in the measurement box.
Even if minor one, less relevant for some, and apparently workarounds (like typing in a value, and Walt touched briefly on another one of them by adding decimals), still thought worth mentioning.

I'd assume one solution could include an option to "Snap to object" and "Snap to closest round decimal or similar.
Let me know if anything unclear.
Thank you.
 

[Aammppaa]

Thanks for the video. It clearly shows exactly what you are experiencing.

I absolutely agree that the Contour tool would be better if it snapped to other objects.

But I also feel that Affinity is already providing you with a number of tools / workflows that would avoid your other issues...

Imagine machining a piece of wood to a specific size, I could of course do it by hand, and if I had sufficient patience and skill could make it a precise 10cm cube. Or I could tell a computer controlled mill to make a cube of exactly 10cm.

Similarly, I could try to drag a square of precisely 10cm and add a contour of 4mm. With a high DPI mouse, a steady hand, sufficient decimal points on the measurement display and considerable patience I could do it.

Or I could type 10cm into the Square tool, and then type 4mm into the Contour tool. And if I need the same size contour on multiple shapes, I'd just use the Style Picker.

The measurement boxes are there for a reason - they fill the exact role that you are asking for.

[Darner]

4 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

Thanks for the video. It clearly shows exactly what you are experiencing.

I absolutely agree that the Contour tool would be better if it snapped to other objects.

But I also feel that Affinity is already providing you with a number of tools / workflows that would avoid your other issues...

Imagine machining a piece of wood to a specific size, I could of course do it by hand, and if I had sufficient patience and skill could make it a precise 10cm cube. Or I could tell a computer controlled mill to make a cube of exactly 10cm.

Similarly, I could try to drag a square of precisely 10cm and add a contour of 4mm. With a high DPI mouse, a steady hand, sufficient decimal points on the measurement display and considerable patience I could do it.

Or I could type 10cm into the Square tool, and then type 4mm into the Contour tool. And if I need the same size contour on multiple shapes, I'd just use the Style Picker.

The measurement boxes are there for a reason - they fill the exact role that you are asking for.

There are often workarounds to most tools / issues. But this feedback was given not about asking for workarounds as stated earlier, but for hopefully enhanced workflow in general for Affinity to have a look at for coming updates. Even though Walt had a good point in theory with decimal thing. But this requires you to make two or three steps instead of one, and if a tool can have half the steps with same result with a simple tweak.