Artboard chaos, "Resize to Fit" and "Tidy" button or keyboard shortcut.

[mpstaton]

Hi There,

My Artboards get super out of hand, I am getting to the point where I needlessly create new files. I end up doing gymnastics to try to use the alignment tool across wide canvases. 

Please just steal these two features from Figma: Resize to Fit, and Tidy.  

Here's a GIF of the Resize to Fit option.  

 

 

 

[loukash]

5 hours ago, mpstaton said:

Resize to Fit

For some odd reason, snapping doesn't work if you want to resize an artboard so that it snaps to its children bounds. Not sure if this is a bug, an oversight, or "by design".

But when you enable snapping, you can simply draw a new artboard with the Artboard tool, and that will snap to other objects. Then simply move all layers into the new artboard via the Layers panel and delete the old empty artboard.

[Return]

Group the contents and release it from the artboard then it will snap.
Or simply export the released group through normal export or export persona.
(Yes even if its not on an artboard)

[Barry Newman]

Yes, resize to fit is so simple to use and thus simply missing in Affinity:

 

[Barry Newman]

Tidy is also a neat feature, I don't need it but I guess Publisher users would like it:

 

[loukash]

24 minutes ago, Return said:

release it from the artboard then it will snap

Ah, good catch. More or less the same workaround like just drawing a new artboard then.

[mpstaton]

19 minutes ago, Barry Newman said:

Tidy is also a neat feature, I don't need it but I guess Publisher users would like it:

Basically whenever your canvas gets out of hand. Which happens for me all the time.  You can just grab everything and press Tidy.  I think anyone who ends up working much in the same file rather than in many different files would agree.  

Maybe I'm the only idiot who does stuff like this, but here is a screenshot of the primary file I've been working in for over three months.  I'm trying to create pretty detailed yet easy to understand graphics for data modeling (I don't know if you've looked into it, but they're still using basic shapes and it doesn't represent even a fraction of the concepts that come up all the time in engineering and in UI Design.  I take that back, this is a much cleaner version after I moved all kinds of Icon sets to a different file.

I don't even know how to to tidy this. Everything is in different sizes, it's all over the place.  (I know it's my fault, but all I have to do in Figma is press Tidy.  Magic.  

And for the record, I'm a founder CEO not a designer.  So when I say three months, I mean three months of 20 minute chunks of time I do not have.  

 

 

Edited Friday at 09:47 PM by mpstaton
addendum

[Return]

For this it's best to use the export persona.
See help: https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/pages/ExportPersona/exportPersona.html
Tuts: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=affinity+designer+export+persona&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos

[debraspicher]

3 hours ago, mpstaton said:

Basically whenever your canvas gets out of hand. Which happens for me all the time.  You can just grab everything and press Tidy.  I think anyone who ends up working much in the same file rather than in many different files would agree.  

Maybe I'm the only idiot who does stuff like this, but here is a screenshot of the primary file I've been working in for over three months.  I'm trying to create pretty detailed yet easy to understand graphics for data modeling (I don't know if you've looked into it, but they're still using basic shapes and it doesn't represent even a fraction of the concepts that come up all the time in engineering and in UI Design.  I take that back, this is a much cleaner version after I moved all kinds of Icon sets to a different file.

I don't even know how to to tidy this. Everything is in different sizes, it's all over the place.  (I know it's my fault, but all I have to do in Figma is press Tidy.  Magic.  

And for the record, I'm a founder CEO not a designer.  So when I say three months, I mean three months of 20 minute chunks of time I do not have. 

For some reason, this is creatively soothing. All those little possibilities arranged according to their own infinity.

Also thank you for the visual explanation as to what "Tidy" does. I'm a bit nutty when it comes to document grid arrangement, so I probably would never use this, but there's certainly a usecase. One big use for such a functionality is to clear up any Artboard arrangements in the decimels. If it utilizes the current document grid (in View>Grids and Axis...), that would be even smarter. Anything beyond that would be better done with a script when that becomes available.. which you're probably a good candidate for.

[Barry Newman]

It's not just about tidying up creative elements, it's also about arranging them. Faster than with guides and traditional cumbersome methods. But with less control, of course. Sometimes automation does it well enough.

[Pšenda]

22 hours ago, debraspicher said:

If it utilizes the current document grid

But the problem is that in the case of using Artboards, there is no Document Grid - each Artboard has its own locally defined Grid parameters.

[debraspicher]

21 hours ago, Barry Newman said:

It's not just about tidying up creative elements, it's also about arranging them. Faster than with guides and traditional cumbersome methods. But with less control, of course. Sometimes automation does it well enough.

Yes, in many cases a simple functionality that could line things up in a reasonable-ish fashion would be suitable. In the future if Artboards have attributes such as "time created", etc, that a script could take advantage of then clients could manage their document a bit more gracefully with their own form of automation.