Line (Stroke) Width Tool

[Ash]

Apps: Designer
Platforms: macOS, Windows and iPad

Affinity Designer now includes a new width tool which is available by default alongside the pencil tool in your toolbar:

The Line Width Tool gives you an on-document way of editing the pressure profile of any curve. For example the curve below has 3 pressure points (5 including the start and end pressure). While in the Line Width tool the position of those points are shown along the curve, and you have the ability to drag to change the width and position of them. 

You can also click to add a new pressure point, or double click to remove any pressure point on a curve.

There are various modifiers available which you can see in the status bar:

Shift + Drag - allows you to modify the width at any point without adjusting it's position
Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Click - manually enter the width required at the chosen point
Ctrl (Mac) / Ctrl (Win) + Drag - move the point position without adjusting the width
Double click - remove pressure point

Additionally you will find some other options in the context toolbar when using this tool:

Adjust Line Weight - if this is turned on then should you drag the width of any point to be greater than the current line width (i.e. greater than 100% pressure) the line width will be increased to allow you to drag the width unrestricted. If it is turned off then the maximum width you can drag to is 100% of the set line width.

Allow point reordering - This option allows to you to specify whether you want to allow the tool to drag one point past another along the curve, effectively swapping their order, or not.

Snap to curve nodes - This will show any nodes on the curve as small white dots and will snap any pressure points to those nodes

Snap to widths on same curve - this will snap the width at any pressure point on a curve to other widths which already exist on that curve. This only applies when holding shift (i.e. you are adjusting the width without altering the point position).

Snap to curve geometry - this will snap the width to the geometry of any selected curves (again if you are holding shift). 

[Affinity Info Bot]

Known Issues in this feature
A list of unresolved issues for this feature, reported by users

• AF-2806 - Line Width Tool causes curve to clip when used on curve inside a Symbol acting as a mask on a group

Released Fixes
A list of issues for this feature, available in the current beta build

• AF-2769 - Clicking with the Line Width Tool inserts a 0% pressure point
• AF-2768 - Line Width Tool: using the Layer > Transform commands while the Line Width Tool is active leaves the pressure points misplaced (in their original position before transform)
• AF-2766 - Cannot use Line Width Tool in Designer Persona in Publisher Windows
• AF-2903 - Line Width Tool handles don't respond to Tool Handle Size changes
• AF-2807 - Set Line Width At Point dialog should say Width instead of Weight
• AF-2700 - [iPad] Line Width tool missing name in tool flyout
• AF-2726 - Line Width Tool rename to Stroke Width Tool
• AF-3004 - Stroke Width Tool will crash if you attempt to adjust the widht of an Start/End Node
• AF-2772 - Expand Stroke fails on curves that have a large 'step' in the Pressure Profile

Upcoming Fixes
A list of issues for this feature, which will be available in a forthcoming build

[dominik]

For some reason I cannot get this tool to work. I do see the line width handles but I cannot grab and drag them. Apart from that, great addition!

d.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I love this! Works great! 

Only thing that's related to this tool that I hope gets improved is this panel:

It's too small. Being able to resize it and making the Profile feature more global so other features could reuse them, i.e. brush settings, would make it even better. It also needs an option to invert the curves.

[dominik]

11 minutes ago, dominik said:

For some reason I cannot get this tool to work. I do see the line width handles but I cannot grab and drag them. Apart from that, great addition!

OK, correction: for some reason I cannot get this tool to work in APub's Designer Persona. In AD it does work as described above.

d.

[anto]

Line Width Tool does not work in Publisher - Designer Persona

 

 

 

[StuartRc]

Just had a quick preview!.. Wow! You have been busy!. This is a great addition and personally going to have a lot of fun with it....
a. One small thing related is that I noticed.. Adding the tool option for this (Combined) has a tooltip just for pencil and not the multiple option. I believe this applies to a number of the drag > toolbar multiple tool options.. To get the correct tool (with the growing number!) is trial and error now.. Could the tooltips be amended to reflect the combined tool options?
b. Agree with @Frozen Death Knight that the panels should eventually be updated to reflect the improvements!
c. Like the way the profile graph can be edited to reflect the line width

[dominik]

On 4/12/2024 at 2:53 PM, Ash said:

You can also click to add a new pressure point, or double click to remove any pressure point on a curve.

Clicking does add a new pressure point but with zero width! To me this looks like a bug. I would expect it adds a point but does not the line's width at that point.

d.

[Circulus]

5 minutes ago, dominik said:

OK, correction: for some reason I cannot get this tool to work in APub's Designer Persona. In AD it does work as described above.

d.

Works on windows.
 

 

 

[anto]

1 minute ago, Return said:

Works on windows.

On my windows 10 - no

[Patrick Connor]

On Windows you will likely need to reset your toolbars (part of CTRL+Run-up) to get the new Line Width tool

[dominik]

9 minutes ago, Return said:

Works on windows.

@Return, thank you for confirming.

I restarted APub and now it does work. Whatever the reason on my first take was.

Looking forward to incorporate this tool into my workflow.

d.

[anto]

When the Line Width Tool is selected and you rotate an object, you'll see an artefact.

 

 

 

[Petar Petrenko]

9 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

On Windows you will likely need to reset your toolbars

There is no such option.

[anto]

Is it possible to make the "Set line Width At Point" window visible and display the width instead of being called by a control-click?

[Hangman]

I'm seeing artefacts when line widths applied using the Line Width tool are quite large...

[Sean P]

47 minutes ago, dominik said:

OK, correction: for some reason I cannot get this tool to work in APub's Designer Persona. In AD it does work as described above.

d.

 

45 minutes ago, anto said:

Line Width Tool does not work in Publisher - Designer Persona

 

Thanks for letting us know I'll get this logged

[MEB]

54 minutes ago, anto said:

When the Line Width Tool is selected and you rotate an object, you'll see an artefact.

 

 

 

Thanks @anto. I'm logging this to be looked at (AF-2768).

[anto]

It is not clear when the Adjust Line Weight button is pressed and when it is not.
When the button is not clicked (gray), I can change all the point values to a certain set value. If the button is pressed (black background), I can change the width of all points as I want.
So when the button is pressed and when it is not? It seemed to me that when it is pressed (dark background), the entire width should be aligned to a certain value. Or am I misunderstanding something?

[Bryan Rieger]

The contour from the line width tool isn't automatically carried over to additional strokes that have been applied to a line/curve, making it difficult to create an outline that matches the existing line contour. It is possible to select the another stroke and set line widths for it (which is very nice), but being able to apply the existing line width settings applied to additional strokes would also be helpful.

Above: Current line widths are not applied to additional strokes.

 

Above: An additional stroke with separate width settings applied to the same curve (very nice).

[Sean P]

1 hour ago, dominik said:

Clicking does add a new pressure point but with zero width! To me this looks like a bug. I would expect it adds a point but does not the line's width at that point.

d.

Thanks - I've logged this to be looked at.

[Ash]

27 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

making it difficult to create an outline that matches the existing line contour

You can right click on a stroke in the appearance panel and Duplicate - which will create a copy of the existing stroke including its pressure profile. Does that help?

[Sean P]

1 hour ago, Return said:

Works on windows.
 

 

Thanks! Interestingly it looks like it could be upgrades from 2.4.2 that is causing the issue. If I ctrl run up I don't get a problem (like you're not), but if I do an upgrade from 2.4.2's User Data I get the issue.

[Bryan Rieger]

1 hour ago, Ash said:

You can right click on a stroke in the appearance panel and Duplicate - which will create a copy of the existing stroke including its pressure profile. Does that help?

Oh, that does help, but it's not overly intuitive as there's no indication in the appearance panel that the stroke has a width profile associated with it. Perhaps adding another attribute such as 'Profile' (see mockup below) could help to indicate that the stroke has additional width/profile data associated with it?

Addendum: I added a few more thoughts on the overall stroke width 'Profile' UX in another post.

Edited April 19, 2024 by Bryan Rieger
Additional thoughts.

[Circulus]

1 minute ago, Sean P said:

Thanks! Interestingly it looks like it could be upgrades from 2.4.2 that is causing the issue. If I ctrl run up I don't get a problem (like you're not), but if I do an upgrade from 2.4.2's User Data I get the issue.

Usually I ctrl+runup and restart pc, in this instance I actually did not and it worked out of the box after adding it to the tools panel.