Is there a way to setup a document so that the printable origin is e.g. in the middle?

[MickM]

I have a structure that I'm making in AD which requires a companion text file containing corresponding coordinates for various elements in the structure. That text file references both positive and negative values of X and Y. I can certainly make a document and put items at whatever coordinates I like, but when using the Export Persona to create gif files of my structure everything with negative X and Y coordinates is truncated i.e. I'm limited to just one "quadrant" for printing, but not for creating and viewing. How can I get around this?

[George-Frazee]

Do you have an example of what you're trying to do? Is the text documents somehow auto generated?

[MickM]

The graphics in the first picture (which has the origin at the top left) has a companion text layout file to interpret the button areas that requires the origin be as shown. If the display is grown (as indicated in the second picture) then anything in that grown section has negative coordinates. If I use the Export Persona to print the second picture then everything above the origin (negative values of y) gets cropped. If I try to play with a different document size I can't force the top left to be e.g. (0,-500). I want to be able to use the Export Persona to great a graphic for the second picture but can't figure it out.

[George-Frazee]

I see so you're clipping the object out of the canvas and want to export the entire thing?

[MickM]

Yes. I don't want to lose the correspondence between the layout text file coordinates and the Affinity Designer coordinates. Doesn't seem like this should be hard to do, I just can't figure out how to do it. Sorry.

[George-Frazee]

I'm not entire sure that's possible with any image software, tbh. The upper right is going to be the 0,0 coordinate no matter what, so even if affinity allowed you to export a slice from outside of the canvas all those numbers would be shifted regardless. This may be something that needs to be addressed in the software that generates the text file.

[lepr]

23 hours ago, MickM said:

I can't force the top left to be e.g. (0,-500).

You see the document unit of measurement (px in your example) selector at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical rulers. That can be dragged to set the document origin at a location other than top left. For example, drag and snap it to (0, 500) to make that location become (0, 0) and the top left become (0, -500).

 

Edited November 5, 2024 by lepr
typo

[MickM]

Thank you! That fixes it - well, almost... After moving the origin I now have to edit all twenty of my slice coordinates because they didn't change after moving the origin. That seems like a bug to me because the coordinates of everything else did  change.