Boundary sizes of vector objects

[kanihoncho]

I remember a long time ago when working with Illustrator the page size would define the boundaries of the vector object. If you created a vector as 3"x3" on a 8.5x11 page, the boundary for that object would be the 8.5x11 page. When you have created multiple, separate small vectors (for the purpose of a vector library) and placed them in one document, selecting the vectors became difficult because of the large overlap of the boundaries. At the time I would reduce the page size to fit the vector rather than enlarging the vector to fit the page. So I see that illustrator, I have been using it again at work after 5 years, allows you to switch to an artboard where you can change the page size similar to cropping an image. This reduced the boundary size at the same time. Very quick and a nice improvement . . .

So I have been creating separate vectors in designer and have once again run into boundary problems when combining them in a new designer document. I'm assuming I am going to have to compromise by enlarging the original vectors and reducing the page size to minimize the boundary to the vector object itself.

I have found that I can export as an .svg file and can define and export the vector object as "selection only" which will minimize the boundary size.

Has anyone worked this way that might have a better solution? TIA . . .

 

[Brian_J]

I think you’re using the term “boundary” to refer to the space between the artwork and the edges of the document/artboard, correct?

There are different ways to affect the content and area of the exported file in AD.

• The Export Area setting can be used to export the Selection Area or Selection Only for any of the available export file types.
• Artboards can be created. https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Artboards/artboards_about.html
• Slices can be created in the Export Persona. https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/ExportPersona/exportPersona.html

[kanihoncho]

Boundary . . . yes.  the bounding box that defines the vector object. I just saw that when I copy and paste the vector, the bounding box is just the minimal area taken up by the vector object itself. When I place the vector, it includes the area defined by the page size . . .

I will have to look into artboards in Designer as I don't know if they are the same thing as used in Illustrator. I've never used slices but aren't they used to cut up images for interactive web use (like GUIs and links assigned to the slices)? Will look into your recommendations this weekend . . .

[Brian_J]

1 hour ago, kanihoncho said:

I've never used slices but aren't they used to cut up images for interactive web use (like GUIs and links assigned to the slices)?

There are various reasons and benefits to using slices. Slices can be used to export areas of a composition, export multiple file types/sizes, and export multiple artboards at once.

In the early days of the web, slices were used in design software as you described — to cut up compositions and save nav/elements as raster images (e.g., PNG). Modern-day scripting, code, and SVG have, for the most part, eliminate the need to do that anymore.