Selecting Objects and Strokes

[puggerspaniel]

Most programs do this (and I hate it) is that you have to select each path of a stroke or the top handle of an object to make a selection, which is super time consuming and painful. One thing I do love about Illustrator is that is you are able to make fast broad "strokes" on your artboard to select many objects at once (sometimes really close together)—as long as you got a tiny corner or path of an object, it gets selected. Please fix this!

[MEB]

Hello puggerspaniel,

Welcome to Affinity Forums.

Go to Affinity Designer -> Preferences, User Interface tab, and check Marquee select on touch. 

This will let you select the objects you touch with the selection marquee.

Hope it makes things easier for you.

[puggerspaniel]

wow thank you for the speedy reply and yes, this is exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you! I just learned about this program and I've been telling everyone, even before I even used it!

[Hokusai]

MEB,

 

I have a Selection question for you. I'm not sure if it is a preference setting or this is normal behaviour. I often create shapes which have other shapes or pieces cut out of them. When I click in an area that has nothing in it (a shape or piece has been cut out or removed from the top shape) the top shape is selected even though the place that I clicked is empty or cut out. I wasn't sure why the top shape is selected? Does my question make sense?

[MattP]

Could you either share a .afdesign showing the problem, or a screenshot to illustrate where you click and which object gets selected? It might be something trivial to resolve if it's a bug, or alternatively we could explain why it's doing what it's doing...

 

We do many passes at hit-testing when you click the mouse just once - basically we try to be helpful by selecting the thing you clicked on if you clicked on something, or the thing you were most likely to be after if you didn't click on anything, if it made sense to offer it. Without seeing a specific example though, I can't really offer anything too useful at this point...

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Hokusai]

MattP,

 

I would be happy to upload an .afdesign file to show you what I'm talking about but maybe I'm slow or something but I can't for the life of me find an "attachment" button on this forum. How do you upload a file? 

[MattP]

The forum strikes again! It foxed me too, initially! Just click the 'More reply options' button and at the bottom of that page you'll see the option to upload and attach files :)

[Hokusai]

MattP,

 

Thanks! I spent a long time trying to figure out how to attach a file and I never would have figured it out without your help. Here is my file. You will notice that it is a simple black square with 2 circles and a triangle cut out. Under the black square there is a red rectangle but I can't select it or even click in the non-shape areas with the node tool. Thanks for your help. 

Sample.afdesign

[MEB]

@Hokusai

Shift-click the red rectangle to select it. Shift-clickling overlapping objects will allow you to cycle between them from the topmost to the bottom one.

[Hokusai]

MEB,

 

Thanks for the hint but it didn't work for me. Shift-click didn't work but after playing with it some, Option-click (or Alt-click) did allow me to cycle through overlapping objects.  It worked like a charm, thanks! I'm still not sure why when I click into an area that has nothing but is surrounded by an object, it selects the object? For example, if I had the black rectangle selected and I wanted to deselect it, I should be able to do so by clicking into the white area of the eye or the nose of my crude looking figure but I can't because the black rectangle will still be selected. 

[MattP]

Perhaps our approach when dealing with polycurve objects is flawed? (Polycurves are obviously when a single shape is formed from many separate curves - as is the case here)...  I'll look at the logic - in your case I can see where you'd not want our current behaviour. Thanks for attaching the file - it shows the problem clearly :)

[MEB]

Hi Hokusai.

I'm sorry about the confusion. The shortcut i gave you was wrong as you quickly discovered. It's indeed alt-click.

I was a little tired yesterday and despite thinking the right shortcut i wrote a different one.

Glad you sorted it out.

[Hokusai]

MattP,

 

Thanks for the response. I'm glad that my sample file was able to illustrate my problem. For me it is more intuitive that nothing is selected when I click into an area that is empty than to select the shape that surrounds an empty space. 

 

MEB,

 

No worries about the shortcut. Once I read your suggestion, I tried a few different key combinations until I found the correct one. Thanks.