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Thanks Lee!

 

Probably already aware of this too, but I've noticed that the inverse is true when artboards share a Y axis (versus an X axis). Attached is an example of this behavior.

 

When pasting an object from artboard A to artobards B (right) and C (below):

  • the object retains its Y coord on artboard B
  • the object retains its X coord on artboard C

post-31691-0-48409600-1476724969_thumb.png

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  • 2 months later...

Is there any way to paste an object into the exact same place (X & Y coord) from one artboard into another artboard in AD?

 

Every time I try it seems to retain its Y coord, but not its X coord.

 

Thanks for the help!  :)

I believe I've found the solution! Copy your object, select Artboard tool, select the artboard you wish to paste to, then ⌥⌘V to "paste inside". For me, this places it in the same relative location.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Same problem here. Y-coordinates are kept, X's aren't.

 

I believe I've found the solution! Copy your object, select Artboard tool, select the artboard you wish to paste to, then ⌥⌘V to "paste inside". For me, this places it in the same relative location.

This didn't work for me :-( Looking forward to any other advice/workaround.

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  • 3 weeks later...

kevinthr's solution didn't work for me either. I work around this by using a temporary rectangle as an "anchor". Select both artboards first (AD won't include an artboard in the candidates list just by hovering it). Then create a rectangle, snap it to one of the corners, select the objects you want plus the rectangle, then copy and snap the whole bunch to the target artboard. Delete the rectangle. A bit cumbersome, but it works.

 

To the Serif guys: Is there any possibility of pasting objects in place in a future release?

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I think one of the the problems implementing this may be that artboards can be of any size, shape, or rotated to any angle (although I can't think of many reasons why users would want anything other than unrotated rectilinear artboards), & they do not have to be placed in the workspace in any particular arrangement, so the meaning of "the same place" in one artboard relative to another is ambiguous, except when both are the same size, shape, & angle.

 

As it is, if the artboards are aligned such that either an x or y starting coordinate of the copied object in the source artboard lines up in the workspace with the same x or y coordinate in the target artboard, it will be pasted at that same coordinate, but otherwise it will be centered in the target artboard. (To see how this works now, try repeating what is demonstrated in JonathanBall's screenshot, but try using artboards of different sizes, ones that don't line up in a regular grid pattern, & so on.)

 

Anyway, because of this, a general purpose "paste in place between artboards" function would need to resolve this ambiguity somehow.

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As it is, if the artboards are aligned such that either an x or y starting coordinate of the copied object in the source artboard lines up in the workspace with the same x or y coordinate in the target artboard, it will be pasted at that same coordinate

 

I believe there is a bug or I may be missing something. I have artboards of the same size (they're copies of each other, screens of the same app on the same device) and when I paste I only get the same Y position, the X position is completely ignored.

 

On the attached screenshot the original icon on the left artboard, and on the right artboard the pasted one. It doesn't paste at the same X coordinate which is very frustrating when working with this kind of design.

 

It happens on both stable and latest beta (as of April 18th) on Windows.

post-43463-0-80679000-1492543523_thumb.png

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I believe there is a bug or I may be missing something. I have artboards of the same size (they're copies of each other, screens of the same app on the same device) and when I paste I only get the same Y position, the X position is completely ignored.

I don't know if this is a bug, by design or what but what I meant was either an x or y coordinate will line up, but not both. It seems to have nothing to do with if the artboards are the same size, only if one (but not both) of the two coordinate line up, basically the same as for snapping on a single artboard or the canvas if artboards are not used.

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I don't know if this is a bug, by design or what but what I meant was either an x or y coordinate will line up, but not both. It seems to have nothing to do with if the artboards are the same size, only if one (but not both) of the two coordinate line up, basically the same as for snapping on a single artboard or the canvas if artboards are not used.

 

Ah, I see. Hmm, if this is by design then it's a weird choice. I believe most of us expect Serif to change/fix this behaviour, in any case.

I get your point about Artboards in different rotations and dimensions, that's a funky case.

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I get your point about Artboards in different rotations and dimensions, that's a funky case.

Different rotations would be somewhat unusual but not different dimensions. For example, one artboard might be intended for a standard size printed page output while another could be for a printed label of any shape & size or for a web page mockup. Some examples of this are shown in the Affinity Designer 1.4 - Artboards: From Content video tutorial, beginning at about the 2:00 mark.

 

It also might be helpful to review the narrator's comments in the first minute or so of the Affinity Designer - Artboards: Basics tutorial. From that, I think it is fairly obvious that in Affinity artboards were always intended to be flexible so they can meet many different needs. A more page-oriented approach may come with Publisher, but we will have to wait & see about that.

 

You may also want to consider how Constraints can be used in artboards, as shown in the Affinity Designer 1.5 - Constraints: Worked Example for Web Design tutorial, & how this could complicate any default behavior that attempted to preserve relative x & y coordinate values when copying & pasting between artboards.

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Some kind of "paste in place" is heavily needed here as well.

 

If you have artboards of the same dimensions, because you mockup several screens for an app or something like that, It would save sooooooooo much time if you can copy and paste an element from one artboard to another without setting the  transformation values manually afterwards. That's really stressful if you have to do it in 10 artboards again and again for several objects.  

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Some kind of "paste in place" is heavily needed here as well.

 

If you have artboards of the same dimensions, because you mockup several screens for an app or something like that, It would save sooooooooo much time if you can copy and paste an element from one dartboard to another without setting the  transformation values manually afterwards. That's really stressful if you have to do it in 10 artboards again and again for several objects.  

 

I don't know how well this would work in every workflow, but have you considered using artboards as symbols for this? You could start with one artboard, adding all the common elements to it, then making that artboard a symbol, & duplicating it as a basis for the others, turning off sync as needed to make additions or changes to individual artboards.

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I don't know how well this would work in every workflow, but have you considered using artboards as symbols for this? You could start with one artboard, adding all the common elements to it, then making that artboard a symbol, & duplicating it as a basis for the others, turning off sync as needed to make additions or changes to individual artboards.

 

I do it all the time, but it's a difficult workaround to a trivial task -- placing objects in the same position. Since symbols look exactly the same as non-symbols in the work area and I don't look at the Layers panel at all times, I often find out that I've misplaced elements in other artboards because they are inside symbols. This is one of the cases where AD is quite inefficient compared to other tools. Schubi63 has a point here.

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It can be a trivial task only when all the artboards are the same size. When they are not, then there must be some non-trivial method provided to specify the position on each artboard relative to the others & relative to some reference point on the pasted item (top left, center, whatever).

 

If the symbols workaround is not suitable for some reason, another possible workaround for some workflows might be to start off with a "master" artboard, add guides to it, & then duplicate it for each same-sized artboard in the project. Since the guides are duplicated relative to each artboard, it would be reasonably trivial to snap each copy to the same position on each artboard. This would be particularly useful for creating a consistent structure with 'slots' for different elements, even when the same ones are not present on every artboard or all the same size.

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It can be a trivial task only when all the artboards are the same size. When they are not, then there must be some non-trivial method provided to specify the position on each artboard relative to the others & relative to some reference point on the pasted item (top left, center, whatever).

 

It would be quite a trivial task to paste objects in the same coordinates as the previous artboard. I believe this would solve the cases our fellow users are talking about here, including the cases where artboards are not the same size. If one of the artboards has a different coordinate system, the user will have to reposition the object(s) manually, which is already what we do now.

 

Targeting the 1% instead of the majority is one of the things that makes some systems unnecessarily complicated these days.

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It would be quite a trivial task to paste objects in the same coordinates as the previous artboard. I believe this would solve the cases our fellow users are talking about here, including the cases where artboards are not the same size.

Except that if the "same" coordinates (by which I assume you mean the top left x & y ones) are outside the dimensions of the targeted artboard, then the object would not be pasted into that artboard at all.

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I don't know how well this would work in every workflow, but have you considered using artboards as symbols for this? You could start with one artboard, adding all the common elements to it, then making that artboard a symbol, & duplicating it as a basis for the others, turning off sync as needed to make additions or changes to individual artboards.

Hi RC-R,

 

no I haven't thought about creating a symbol out of an artboard yet. Interesting point. But somehow it can't be really "the way" to aim that goal.

 

But I could give it at least a try. Although I know that I will get in trouble with that method. 

 

Sometimes "it happens" that I have a symbol and one of its child object I have altered in a way that it is unique - it has different attributes than the other symbols. That state will be prompted by AD (a dashed orange line instead of the normal orange line). Which is nice. But AD does not give any information what exactly is the difference. That happened a lot during my work on my last project. And as a result I had lots of re-use symbols, position then, scale them etc.

 

If I image that I went the way you suggested (which sounds nice) I see a lot of work (if those non-obvious differences between the symbols happen) by using the artboard(symbol) again to have a clean version again - but then to redo all the needed obvious modifications (like you have said (turning off sync, alter elements, logo ... what ever). That's at least what my brain says. ;) 

 

Stefan

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I believe this should work like this: If the artboards have the same dimensions it should respect the object coordinates, if not the object should be placed in the center of the artboard where you want to paste it. There's still some issues here - currently  it's not working like that - but we already have this one logged.

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It would be quite a trivial task to paste objects in the same coordinates as the previous artboard. I believe this would solve the cases our fellow users are talking about here, including the cases where artboards are not the same size. If one of the artboards has a different coordinate system, the user will have to reposition the object(s) manually, which is already what we do now.

 

Targeting the 1% instead of the majority is one of the things that makes some systems unnecessarily complicated these days.

I couldn't have said it better! 

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@MEB: It doesn't work like that, at least on my Mac. Even if the artboards are the same size, at best the paste will have the same x or y (but not both) coordinate relative to the selected artboard, & that happens only if the artboards are lines up either vertically or horizontally. Effectively, the paste snaps to an x or y coordinate as if all the artboards were a single canvas & snapping to object geometry was enabled.

 

@rubs: there are several reasons this is not trivial from a programming/usability standpoint, whether or not some percentage of the user base thinks it should be from the standpoint of whatever workflow they prefer or type of project they are doing. One of them is the ambiguity of the coordinate reference point (like top left or center) if the artboards are not exactly the same size. Another is the possibility of different constraints or different children lock settings on different artboard or other nested containers (even if the artboards are the same size).

 

That all has to be implemented in some way that is reasonably user friendly, won't cause puzzling unexpected behaviors later on, & is adaptable to a wide range of projects & workflows. There is nothing trivial about that.

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