Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 1)

[celliott80]

Not sure if anyone has reported this bug yet. When creating a symbol with text in it, Designer will always crash if you try to edit the text of an instance of that symbol while syncing is turned off.

[Tekikou]

Hey guys, the app is crashing when you try to constrain a group which contains a compound shape.

I tried to do that since it looks impossible to constrain a compound shape directly.

[hawk]

This is a hot update.

 

I've got a few questions/suggestions:

 

1. Snap to gaps and sizes - this doesn't seem to be working yet? It's showing the bounding box and mid point distances but it doesn't snap to them. The way I thought it would work is like in Pixelmator. For example, if I create a blue square, duplicate it and move it to the right so that there's a 50px gap between the two squares, then repeat that step, the third square should snap to 50px from the second square.

 

2. With constraints, if I want an object to maintain its aspect ratio but scale with its container to take up as much space as possible on both axes without clipping, I can do this by enabling the width & height constraints and the "min-fit" aspect ratio constraint. However, if I want this object to always touch the edges if possible, I have to first scale the container to the object's aspect ratio, then place the object inside the container, enable the constraints and scale the container back. Is there no way to set up this kind of constraint without this additional step? I think there should be a way to set the margin for the constraint on each side like in Xcode.

 

3. Every time I move an object with an aspect ratio constraint outside of its container its size changes. I think there should be a way to move objects out of hierarchies without changing their sizes regardless of the constraints.

 

4. With symbols, is there any way to reattach properties of one without recreating the entire instance of the symbol? Also, could there be a way to set some properties to be detached by default for a symbol, so you don't have to disable syncing every time you drop a new instance onto the canvas?

 

There should be some keyboard shortcuts and menu items for the new features, like toggling syncing, a context menu item for creating symbols from the selected layer/group/object in the layers studio, detaching objects, etc.

 

Thanks for finally releasing this exciting beta!

[MattP]

Hey guys, the app is crashing when you try to constrain a group which contains a compound shape.

I tried to do that since it looks impossible to constrain a compound shape directly.

I'd deliberately disabled constraints for Compound objects - it looks like you've circumvented it by placing them in a group. At the moment you can't do this because the logic doesn't hold valid because a compound is made from the nodes it contains, and the nodes that it contains need to know their transform in order to tell the Compound object how big it is, but with constraints turned on you need to know how big the object is before you can tell it what its transform is (so you get a cyclic loop that will crash). I've got a way to fix this, but didn't get chance to get it sorted on Friday morning...

[william7]

Hi william,

 

When the lines are on inside the constraints box, it means the shape can stretch in those directions. When the lines are on around the box it means they are clamped to that distance. Hopefully that makes sense?

 

Thanks,

Matt

This explanation makes sense however it is the inverse of what I would expect and I think UI should be changed. When placing constraints outside the box the object is constrained positionally when the lines are selected/on/solid but inside the box the object is constrained to its current size when the lines are deselected/off/dashed. I think this is confusing to the user and that constrained should always be when the line is selected/on/solid.

 

Thanks,

 

William

[Seneca]

You don't have to use it if you don't want to. We've tried to make it so it doesn't get in the way if you don't use it.

 

Absolutely, I was just trying to think of a situation in which it could be used.

As a general rule I prefer to keep them separate but I'm sure there will be times when this will be useful.

 

I actually think that it might be very useful to display the Base name in the menus as a main entry and all styles derived from this as subenus.

So for example one could create a Base style named Headings and this could be an entry in the menu and Heading 1, Heading 2, etc could be displayed in a submenu because they are derived from Headings which is a base style. A simple tick box next to the Base style whether it should be displayed in the menus would be perfect.

 

Another idea that came to my mind and that comes from CSS is to have collapsable spaces. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here. Just a thought. 

 

Again, thanks for taking time to respond to my queries, very appreciated.

 

I really want the styles in Affinity Designer to be top class, in fact the best in its class.

 

Regards

[marosholly]

Hi guys, great beta. Love all the new features, especially symbols and the asset manager. I have two feature requests :

- The Export persona lacks a bit of android love. :( Seems like all the UI features are developed for iOS only, like the 1x 2x 3x size export option. It would be super nice if we could get a mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, xxhdpi and xxxhdpi (or 4x) export options for android too. Can't be that hard right?
- Also, i love the idea of a iOS mirror app, but don't make affinity another iOS only friendly design tool. For now, i'm happy with using skala for UI mirroring but using an affinity Android mirror app would be very awesome.

[Malcolm]

Hi Guys, question for anyone who's understood the constraints better than me :( 

 

Just trying to test a very simply three button set up in which... 

• We have 3 buttons across the bottom of an Artboard.
• When the artboard is stretched wider - all three should be constrained, to their left right and middle positions and importantly not scale.
• I can easily link the left and right buttons to the edge of the artboard, but can't get the middle button to keep it's central position. 

This looks like a very useful feature once I've worked it out. For my use case some additions or simplifications might be useful.

 

Suggestions

Perhaps we could anchor an object to it's relative screen position, so if it's 1/3rd (container width) in X it will always be 1/3 in the X position as the container size changes.

• Perhaps that would be two check boxes. relative X pos and relative Y pos.
• Scaling could also be assigned in a similar way, so check boxes for scale X and Y.
• Both of these calculations could use the objects centre point set in the transform panel. 

No idea if that would work correctly with the transformation matrix of AD but could make things simpler and easier to understand in a lot of cases if not all? Anyway just my 10pence on the subject. 

[Ben]

In one word: this is a spectacular release … thank you so much …  :)

 

(I am almost reluctant to post this, since you have done such a fabulous work. But there is a minor bug with the Pen Tool … when drawing the first two nodes of a path. See below.)

 

This one is fixed.  Will be in next Beta update.

[A_B_C]

Cheers, Ben …  :)

 

(This little bug reminded me of an instrument I created in Native Instruments Reaktor long time ago. One could modulate the position of the control nodes of a Bézier curve by a LFO, and the result looked quite similar … maybe an idea for later versions of AD …  ;))

[MattP]

Hi Guys, question for anyone who's understood the constraints better than me :(

 

Just trying to test a very simply three button set up in which... 

• We have 3 buttons across the bottom of an Artboard.
• When the artboard is stretched wider - all three should be constrained, to their left right and middle positions and importantly not scale.
• I can easily link the left and right buttons to the edge of the artboard, but can't get the middle button to keep it's central position. 

This looks like a very useful feature once I've worked it out. For my use case some additions or simplifications might be useful.

 

Suggestions

Perhaps we could anchor an object to it's relative screen position, so if it's 1/3rd (container width) in X it will always be 1/3 in the X position as the container size changes.

• Perhaps that would be two check boxes. relative X pos and relative Y pos.
• Scaling could also be assigned in a similar way, so check boxes for scale X and Y.
• Both of these calculations could use the objects centre point set in the transform panel. 

No idea if that would work correctly with the transformation matrix of AD but could make things simpler and easier to understand in a lot of cases if not all? Anyway just my 10pence on the subject. 

Malcolm,

 

Take a look at the attached file - is this what you're after? :)

 

resize_me.afdesign

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Malcolm]

Malcolm,

 

Take a look at the attached file - is this what you're after? :)

 

resize_me.afdesign

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

Hey Matt that was exactly what i was looking for. Interesting... where I went wrong was not adding a container for the buttons.

 

Not sure how you communicate it clearly that the middle button would require a parent transform (the button backing rect that itself is constrained) when the left and right buttons don't need the parent to perform their maintain left and right pos.

 

Anyway that has cleared it up for me, and I'm getting a clearer picture of how the constrain tool works. I can use a rect as a null transform in my setups (make it not visible), might do that as a default step for constrained objects.

 

Top stuff cheers.

[lenogre]

"Instantané" don't know how you say in english (Take ?) is the most powerful function for me. I've always a lot of several colors for a same product with different combinations and this function will stop headaches for me.

 

I've tried Symbols but I've not understood the philosophy. Instances with Cinema4D (my reference) work in another way.

 

Great job !

 

I discover "Instantané" is already in AD 1.4. Shame on me !

[MEB]

Hey Matt that was exactly what i was looking for. Interesting... where I went wrong was not adding a container for the buttons.

 

Not sure how you communicate it clearly that the middle button would require a parent transform (the button backing rect that itself is constrained) when the left and right buttons don't need the parent to perform their maintain left and right pos.

 

Anyway that has cleared it up for me, and I'm getting a clearer picture of how the constrain tool works. I can use a rect as a null transform in my setups (make it not visible), might do that as a default step for constrained objects.

 

Top stuff cheers.

 

If you remove the bottom container and apply the bottom space constraint to all three buttons it should work as you expect too. The center button is center-aligned horizontally in relation to the large container so it should keep its relative position even when you resize the large container.

 

There's one difference if you keep the bottom container: since its height changes according to the large container's height, the buttons also change their vertical position slightly (they are vertically centered in relation to the bottom container) to accommodate the bottom container's height change (so the distance from the buttons to the bottom of the large container grows proportionately when you resize it).

[Malcolm]

If you remove the bottom container and apply the bottom space constraint to all three buttons it should work as you expect too. The center button is center-aligned horizontally in relation to the large container so it should keep its relative position even when you resize the large container.

 

The bottom container also introduces another variable here: since its height changes according to the large container's height, the buttons also change their vertical position slightly (they are vertically centered in relation to the bottom container) to accommodate the bottom container's height change.

 

Cheers MEB, I see where I was going wrong... I had converted the top object to an artboard - and that's when it stops working.

 

So the confusion is some aspects of Constraints work with Artboards (maintain gap to edge) but others don't (horizontal relationship in this case). Perhaps there is a good reason for that?

 

Still I'd maintain thats a little bit confusing as, er... I was confused :)

[MattP]

Cheers MEB, I see where I was going wrong... I had converted the top object to an artboard - and that's when it stops working.

 

So the confusion is some aspects of Constraints work with Artboards (maintain gap to edge) but others don't (horizontal relationship in this case). Perhaps there is a good reason for that?

 

Still I'd maintain thats a little bit confusing as, er... I was confused :)

I think there's actually a problem whenever the 'Lock Children' checkbox is set on the context toolbar in the Move Tool... and that's (unfortunately) set by default whenever you select an artboard! :(  So, I think the bug is that Constraints and 'Lock Children' aren't playing nicely together right now... I'll get that sorted out :)

[catlover]

Grid system  color customization.

Is the Guide-system going the same way ?

Love it,

thanks !!!!

 

C.L.

[Ben]

Grid system  color customization.

Is the Guide-system going the same way ?

Love it,

thanks !!!!

 

C.L.

 

Guide system?  Do you mean, just the colour of the guides and margins?

[Tekikou]

I'd deliberately disabled constraints for Compound objects - it looks like you've circumvented it by placing them in a group. At the moment you can't do this because the logic doesn't hold valid because a compound is made from the nodes it contains, and the nodes that it contains need to know their transform in order to tell the Compound object how big it is, but with constraints turned on you need to know how big the object is before you can tell it what its transform is (so you get a cyclic loop that will crash). I've got a way to fix this, but didn't get chance to get it sorted on Friday morning...

Great !

 

I have another issue with Artboard titles (since their introduction, it's not specific to this beta), they're too small and too light.

 

Note that I have a special configuration for the LCD font smoothing:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 4

Also note that my screen is not Retina.

 

[n0rmand0]

I vote "i" for the eye dropper tool shortcut.

 

One other useful feature is to incorporate the "option" modifier to the tool.

By default, the Eye Dropper Tool grabs a color and applies it to your selection (if there is a selection made)

With "option" selected, you can apply or "drop" the selected color onto  an object.

 

Also handy: Are there plans to grab/drop stroke weights and other styles?

[Busenitz]

Has anyone else had trouble with borderless printing?  It expanded the document way off the page, so that about 1/2" or more was lost all the way around.

[00Ghz]

Apparently Sketch is also getting auto-resizing stuff in latest beta. Quite the coincidence :D

[farbenfeuer]

"Don't forget to backup your files before opening with 1.5" yeeeaaahh... about that....

 

What do you do if you may or may not have forgotten to do that? :>

[MEB]

As far as i know after you save the file in version 1.5 there's no way to open it back in 1.4.

If you have a backup or use Time Machine you may be able to recover the original file.

[anon1]

you can try to open the document in 1.5, make a new document in 1.4.2 and copy paste the items, may work for some  :)