Possible snapping related bug, or at least annoying feature

[KiLa]

Hi, I was designing some UI elements and I stumbled on a potential bug, or at least very annoying feature: depending whether objects are insidde a group or a layer, Snapping seems to behave a bit differently.

If you open the attached file, you should see something like in the attached image.

If I select the blue ball and move it above or below the green ball, I see a green guide when I'm near the center of the green ball, so that I can allign them vertically. Blue and green balls are in a group.

If I try to do the same with red ball, andd move it obove or below the yellow ball, there are some guides but the guide that indicates the middle point is missing. Red and yellow ball are inside of a layer.

See attached image for the snapping options that I'm using.

Question(s): Is this a bug or by design? What kind of settings I should use in order to get similar snapping behaviour in both cases?

I love Affinity Designer, but the Snappping have always been one of those "trial and error" features for me - it never seems behave like I'm expecting it to. Probably because I'm a moron

-k

test.afdesign

[lepr]

You are no moron.

The Group case is OK and working as expected. The Layer case strongly smells of bug: when dragging one Ellipse, the bounding box and centre of the parent Layer, instead of the sibling Ellipse, is being considered as a snapping target. The weirdness does not happen in 2.4.2. It does happen in the current beta of 2.6.3.

This video should make the misbehaviour clearer:

 

Edited May 3 by lepr
added video

[RE4LLY]

While it certainly looks like bug behavior as already explained by lepr, there is a thing you can do to mitigate this issue for the moment.

Set the snapping candidate list to Immediate Layers and you should be able to snap to the centerline again easily.

[KiLa]

@lepr Thank you for verifying it

@RE4LLY Yups, using Immediate Layers fixes it.

I will report this as a bug, although I will not do it until next week maybe one of the developers will read this post and he will assure us that this is how it was originally designed to work

 

[NathanC]

Hi @KiLa,

On 5/3/2025 at 4:58 PM, KiLa said:

I will report this as a bug, although I will not do it until next week maybe one of the developers will read this post and he will assure us that this is how it was originally designed to work

 

No need to create a new thread as I've moved this over to the bugs section 🙂. Can confirm i've replicated and logged this issue with the developers.

[KiLa]

OK