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Snapping to guidelines doesn't work right?


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Hi all.

 

I was perplexed when I drew half a logo, snapping all of its right-side line ends to a vertical guideline; then mirrored it horizontally and expected the new half to line up correctly. It didn't. The centerline nodes of the two halves were offset horizontally by a tiny amount, so after I'd combined the shapes and tried to delete the redundant (overlapping) nodes down the center (along the guideline), the geometry was messed up (no longer symmetrical).

 

I attached a screen grab of the apparent bug in action. Anyone else notice this?

 

Thanks.

 

Edit: I guess this belongs in the bug forum, but I can find no way to delete posts. Re-posting there...

bogusSnapping.mov

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Honestly - I don't see any problem but in the video the functionality is exactly as I would expect.

Just change the end from a round edge to a flat line and you see.

Mac print publishing X-Press & Adobe hostage, cooking on extrem high level, subscribing with joy to US Cooks Illustrated & Foreign Affairs, the british Spectator and the swiss Weltwoche - absolute incompatible publications 

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Honestly - I don't see any problem but in the video the functionality is exactly as I would expect.

Just change the end from a round edge to a flat line and you see.

 

You don't see a problem with it snapping to a phantom location that is not the guideline? That's a major problem. What you're drawing is the wireframe geometry of the shape. You can change stroke width and end caps at any time. It is the nodes that are supposed to be snapping to things, and the nodes are in the center of the stroke.

 

But... just to test your idea, I did exactly what you suggested. And guess what happened? Video attached.

buttCapBogusSnap.mov

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I do have a follow-up: Nowhere does the snapping dialog mention the drawing page. It mentions margins, but those are not the culprit.

 

The culprit is "snap to spread," which doesn't mean anything by itself and is unsearchable in the help. I searched specifically for "snap to spread" and got nothing but a bunch of generic hits.

 

So...

 

1. Why isn't it named "snap to page," which would be immediately clear to users? The word "spread" tells us nothing.

2. Why doesn't a search for "snap to spread" turn up an appropriate entry in the help file?

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  • Staff

Hi Stokestack,

1. Spread refers to two adjacent, facing pages in a document where their contents are related. It's a common term in desktop publishing. I'm not sure pages would also be correct here since technically Affinity Designer doesn't have/support pages yet (it will come in a future version) and also not all documents are "technically" pages (for example non-print type documents). Maybe canvas would be better? In any case we will have to make some adjustements to accommodate the pages/spread features of Affinity Publisher so i believe this will be looked at/standardised later.

2. It does bring Snapping where this option is explained (in the Snapping Options almost on bottom) but not Snap to spread directly/specifically.

I will pass this to the dev team. Thanks.

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For what little it is worth, I also found "Snap to spread" a bit hard to figure out at first but I see why "page" would not be the correct term technically. So, with that in mind the Help topic Snapping Options isn't technically correct either because it says "Snap to spread—when checked, content snaps to the edge of the page (ignoring margins)."

 

Even though it is a bit vague, maybe just "Snap to edges" would be a better label for this feature? 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1. Spread refers to two adjacent, facing pages in a document where their contents are related. It's a common term in desktop publishing. I'm not sure pages would also be correct here since technically Affinity Designer doesn't have/support pages yet 

 

 

 

Indeed. In fact, I would have suggested "canvas," but as RCR points out above, Designer's own help file refers to "page" (found it in a broader search later).

 

But yeah, I'd go with "canvas." I think that's what pretty much every other drawing app uses.

 

Thanks for the reply!

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In Affinity "canvas" could also refer to the entire workspace if working in artboard mode, & might possibly be misinterpreted as the working space inside the margins. Because neither "pages" nor "canvas" seems generic enough to cover all the possibilities, I think "edges" is a better choice, even though it is not very precise.

 

But that is just me.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Just to make things that much more confusing, "pasteboard" is also an alternate name for the clipboard, used in that way in Apple's developer documents. Then there is Affinity Designer's "Clip to Canvas," which conflicts with the idea that the canvas is the only area we have to work with in a document.

 

I think there are too many options & modes for any one term to fit them all very well. 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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