[AD] Repeat / Rotate?

[Richard S.]

Hi,

Can someone please tell me if these 2 features are included in Affinity Designer, as I cannot seem to find them (or anything similar.)

 

1) Auto Horizontal / Vertical Repeat:

The ability to select an object on the canvas, then set the horizontal / vertical spacing, along with the number of copies - resulting in automatically creating the required number of copies, spaced as the user defined.

This saves a lot of time when needing for example, 50 copies of a square horizontally spaced a set distance apart from each other.

 

2) Auto Copy and Rotate:

The ability to select an object on the canvas, then set the rotation point (relevant to the object), then set the required number of copies - resulting in automatically creating a circle made from equally spaced copies of the original object, rotated around the selected rotation point.

This saves time when creating a clock face style circle of objects.

 

If these are not possible, I will add them to my wish list.

 

Thank you all in advance.

[Alfred]

You can do both of these with the Power Duplicate feature.

[catlover]

Yes, all these actions are present in AFD.

Done by Ctrl+J keys.

Rotational point can be set by clicking the little rotation target button in the toolbar,

This places a rotation target in the centre of your object/drawing.

This is independent of the rotation point in the transform tab.

You can then type in the exact rational degrees in the transform tab.

There is a Tut on how to do rotational copies in the Aff Designer Video tutorials.

At the time that video was made, the rotational target had not yet been implemented, so it's now even easier to rotate & copy.

[catlover]

Hi, Afred : You beat me to it  :)

[Richard S.]

Alfred / catlover,

Thanks for the replies.

 

I watched the Power Duplicate vide0, and CMD J seems to solve my first point, but I still cannot work out how to create a circle made out of 20 smaller circles (all equally spaced)??

Can someone please point out the steps required. I have created a small red circle on the canvas, and I would now like to create 20 copies of that object, which all rotate around a center point AND which are equally spaced.

 

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[Alfred]

As CL mentioned, you can move the centre of rotation. Place the first object where you want the top of the circle to be, and then press the 'Show Rotation Centre' button on the Context toolbar (unless it's already displayed, of course). Drag the rotation centre down to where you want the centre of the circle to be: if you have Snapping turned on, it's easy to keep it in a direct vertical line with the object. Now when you Cmd+drag the rotation paddle at the top of the object, the new copy will both rotate and revolve around the (invisible) circle at the same time; for a circle comprising 20 copies of the object, you want the angle of rotation to be 360/20 = 18°. Press Cmd+J repeatedly until you have a complete circle.

[Richard S.]

Excellent - thank you very much Alfred, I really appreciate it.

[gr8rck]

Ctrl + J only duplicates for me.   What am missing?   Is it in snapping?

 

-----

 

Nevermind - this post helped me realize my error with making sure edits are on the duplicate -> forum link

 

Ryan.

[Robert Cailliau]

As CL mentioned, you can move the centre of rotation. Place the first object where you want the top of the circle to be, and then press the 'Show Rotation Centre' button on the Context toolbar (unless it's already displayed, of course). Drag the rotation centre down to where you want the centre of the circle to be: if you have Snapping turned on, it's easy to keep it in a direct vertical line with the object. Now when you Cmd+drag the rotation paddle at the top of the object, the new copy will both rotate and revolve around the (invisible) circle at the same time; for a circle comprising 20 copies of the object, you want the angle of rotation to be 360/20 = 18°. Press Cmd+J repeatedly until you have a complete circle.

Yes, this is true but there is a small snag, unless I have not understood something.

I used this process to make tick marks of a clock face.  Hence I needed an angle of 360/60=6 degrees.  However, 59 duplicates did not close the circle.  I struggled with this until I decided to type 6.0000 into the angle field of the transform panel after setting the first rotation.

Here is the object (a simple line segment), with its rotation centre moved to the left:

 

 

Now we start duplicate rotation by first dragging it by the rotation handle, to 6 degrees:

 

 

But when I then make duplicates, they are not correctly positioned.  The 61st will not coincide with the original:

 

 

However, if I type 6.0000 into the transform box, just after the first rotation drag and before typing further CMD-Js:

 

 

then the 61st copy will be correct:

 

 

You can also verify this by clicking one of the duplicates and looking at the angle in the transform box.

 

I consider this a bug.  It has to do with the way Designer calculates internally and should be fixed.  Making technical drawings (my main usage) is tedious until these issues are fixed.

 

Note also that typing into the transform box rotates the object around the position of the default rotation centre, not the one you have set.  That too is a bug.

Robert.

[MEB]

Hi Robert,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Regarding the second issue, currently the input fields on the transform panel only apply/work with the anchor point specified in the Transform dialog (on the left), they do not work with the custom Rotation Centre. I'm checking the first issue regarding rotation precision and will fill a bug report if necessary. Thanks for your support.

[Alfred]

I consider this a bug.  It has to do with the way Designer calculates internally and should be fixed.

 

No, it's to do with the way the values are displayed in the Transform panel. When I tried it just now, I got the sequence 6°, 12°, 18°, 24°, 30°, 36°, 41.9° (at which point I stopped); I backtracked and typed 6 in place of the displayed 6°, and the subsequent duplication worked out exactly as expected.

 

Note also that typing into the transform box rotates the object around the position of the default rotation centre, not the one you have set.  That too is a bug.

 

I see that MEB has addressed this point. Although it isn't a bug, changing the behaviour so that the rotation control in the Transform panel respected the rotation centre set on the canvas would be a very useful improvement that I was sad not to see implemented in Serif DrawPlus.

[Chris_K]

Hi Robert

 

As Alfred has pointed out, the 'Error' in the rotation is due to the object not being rotated by whole degrees, so the rotation is most likely something like 6.03 degrees as an example, therefore it causes rotation through duplication to be off slightly or at least not what you expect. The solution would be to only allow whole degrees to be used in free rotation. This has been raised a couple of times so I think we should look at sorting something out here

[Alfred]

The solution would be to only allow whole degrees to be used in free rotation.

 

Only allowing whole degrees doesn't sound very "free"! ;)

 

The solution would be to allow an exact number to be specified. If you wanted 16 marks evenly distributed around a circle, the angle would need to be 360/16 = 22.5°, and if you wanted 17 marks it would need to be 360/17 = 21.17647058823529°. As my second example has highlighted, the rotation control would need to allow expressions such as 360/17 (as the one in the Transform panel already does) for accuracy in all cases.

[MEB]

Hi Robert,

The issue is with the manual drag. It will never give you exactly 6 degrees. Then, when you adjust the value using the Transform panel what you are actually doing is changing the rotation of the object using its anchor point as reference which also changes its custom Rotation Centre slightly. This means the rotation will be performed around a circle of points rather than a central point. The solution to make it work correctly (geometrically) is to allow the use of the input fields with the custom Rotation Centre. I don't think limiting the angle of the free rotation to whole values is desirable since it imposes a limitation on users.

 

@Alfred,

The issue is not the precision. You can already use expressions in the Rotation input field and they will work fine as long as you are rotating the object around one of its anchor points.

The problem is that you cannot use the custom Rotation Centre as the reference point for the rotation no matter if you insert a value directly or use an expression.

[Alfred]

The issue is with the manual drag. It will never give you exactly 6 degrees. Then, when you adjust the value using the Transform panel what you are actually doing is changing the rotation of the object using its anchor point as reference which also changes its custom Rotation Centre slightly.

 

That's not what I'm seeing here. As described in my earlier post, when I typed 6 (on its own, without the decimal places that Robert had suggested I would need) in the R box in the Transform panel, I got the desired result from the subsequent Duplicate commands.

 

@Alfred,

The issue is not the precision. You can already use expressions in the Rotation input field and they will work fine as long as you are rotating the object around one of its anchor points.

The problem is that you cannot use the custom Rotation Centre as the reference point for the rotation no matter if you insert a value directly or use an expression.

 

Thanks, Miguel. I'm aware of that, which is why I wrote "as the [control] in the Transform panel already does". I was suggesting, in reply to Chris_K's point about free rotation, that there should be a separate control which allows you to enter a value to be used in conjunction with a custom anchor. :)

[MEB]

My bad, sorry. I agree.

[Alfred]

My turn for apologies! I've just tried changing the rotation to 45° from an initial free rotation value of about 32°, and it's quite clear that the rotation centre moves as you described. I think it's just that when you're very close to the desired value (e.g. 5.9857° instead of 6.0000°) the movement of the rotation centre is imperceptibly small. Having said that, if the movement is so small then I can't help wondering if it would ever matter in practice.

[carl123]

Hi Robert

 

For the clock face example, as an alternative way of doing things

 

Try creating 2 points of the clock with one continuous line, say, 12 to 6 o'clock.  Then you can power duplicate this line using the rotation set to 6 degrees and the centre of rotation set to the centre of the line all within the Transform panel

 

Then add a circle shape from the centre outwards and colour it the same colour of the background colour to hide most of the lines just leaving as much as the tick marks that you want to display

 

I have attached a couple of pictures to try to explain what I mean

 

 

Will this work for what you want to do?

[carl123]

An even easier way

 

1. Create two lines, one on top the other
2. Give line 2, no fill or stroke (i.e. transparent)

3. Group the 2 lines

4. Then power duplicate the group, rotated at 6 degrees, with rotation centre set to bottom-centre 

 

 

Hope that's clear, not around for the rest of the day

[HenrikP]

Hi support! I have recently bought both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo to work on my watch projects. I just found this problem out while doing the hour / minute ticks on the dial.

 

When will you have this solved? I think its a very important feature. 

 

Best Henrik

[MEB]

Hi HenrikP,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Can you be more specific? There's quite a few issues being discussing here. Meanwhile this was improved in the latest Beta version (1.6). It's now possible to enter specific values in the Transform panel for the external rotation centre. If you are willing to give it a try you can download the latest beta from here (Mac) or here (Win) or the just wait for the next Mac App Store/retail update.

[R C-R]

Hi HenrikP!

 

Even in the 1.5.5 version of Affinity Designer there are several ways to create hour/minute ticks for a circular clock dial. A variation on what has already been mentioned in this topic you might find useful uses (the AD only feature) symbols. Try this:

 

1. Turn on snapping, with all the 'snap to object' options checked.

2. Draw a reference circle of convenient size to represent the dial & lock its layer.

3. Draw a filled rectangle at the 12 o'clock position on the circle. Use snapping to center it so half the rectangle is on either side of the 12 o'clock centerline & its top edge aligns with the top edge of the circle.

4. With the Pen tool in Line mode, draw a line from the bottom center of the rectangle to the center of the circle. Snapping should make this easy to do.

5. Select the rectangle & the line & in the Symbols panel, click the Create button.

6. Select the symbol in the Layers panel & duplicate it with CMD-J.

7. In the Transform panel, click on the bottom center anchor point & in the R (rotation) field enter 30°. This should result in a second symbol at the 11 o'clock position.

8. Power duplicate with CMD-J to create the remaining hour ticks.

9. Now the interesting part: expand any symbol in the Layers panel so you can see its two parts (the line with the (Curve) label & the rectangle). Click the visible checkbox on the line to hide it. The line on all 12 symbols should now be hidden.

10. Because the rectangle is part of the symbol, you can edit any one instance of it & all the others will get the same edit automatically. So for example you could change the fill color, add a stroke, convert to curves & change the shape, & so on.

 

Use a similar procedure for the minute ticks, changing the rotation angle in step 7 appropriately. You can either delete the minute ticks that occur on hour ticks or group all the hour ticks & move them above the minute ticks, etc.

 

Attached is an AD file showing the hour ticks as symbols using this technique.

Clock ticks.afdesign

[HenrikP]

Thanks MEB! I downloaded the Beta version for mac and it worked fine. Perfect!

 

Also, thanks R C-R for your advices even though I managed without.