Select and copy

[Giraffe]

I saw a tutorial for Illustrator where the guy simply selected part of a rectangle he drew earlier and union-ed with another rectangle, he simply selected part of it, clicked on something and voila he had a copy of that selection and that selection only, i.e no the background wasn't copied. The selection tool was smart enough to detect that he wanted part of that rectangle ONLY. Also it was "copying" not "cutting".

 

Does Affinity Designer have a similar feature?

[Guest]

Hi Giraffe,

 

To be able to select only one of the two rectangles after a boolean addition operation, the "Alt" key must be pressed at the moment of execution of this boolean opération, in order to create a "compound". The two rectangles are then selectable individually by clicking on their thumbnails in layers.

If you expand the small blue icon to the right of the layer thumbnail, you can perform Boolean operations between the two rectangles again.

[Giraffe]

Hi Giraffe,

 

To be able to select only one of the two rectangles after a boolean addition operation, the "Alt" key must be pressed at the moment of execution of this boolean opération, in order to create a "compound". The two rectangles are then selectable individually by clicking on their thumbnails in layers.

 

If you expand the small blue icon to the right of the layer thumbnail, you can perform Boolean operations between the two rectangles again.

 

For some reason nothing shows up when I click on expand but either ways, this isn't what I'm trying to achieve.

 

https://youtu.be/IsbeqtIIt7I?t=258at 4:18, he selects "part" of the pink rectangle and copies it. The tool he used was smart enough to recognize that this is part of a rectangle, not a random part of the drawing. I hope this makes more sense :D

 

EDIT: I didn't press Alt when I did the boolean operation but yea like I said, what I'm trying to achieve is a bit different.

[Guest]

Sorry, I did not understand the question, it's actually clearer with the video.

I do not know if it uses a special tool in the video, but once it has created and moved the rectangle it switches to the direct selection tool to move both the rectangle and the top line of the form By selecting only the top two nodes of it and the entire rectangle.

The same result can be obtained in AD with the node tool after selection of the two forms.

But I may be missing something ...

[MEB]

Hi Giraffe,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

What he has done was to select the rectangle tool exactly at 4:22s to draw a small rectangle over the pink object using it as reference to get the correct width of the rectangle and then moved it up (4:35s). You can enable snapping in Affinity to help you draw the rectangle with the same width as the first column of the pink object. He then adjusted its position using the direct selection tool (the Node Tool in Affinity Designer) and selecting both the nodes of that small rectangle and the top two of the left column of the pink object. Finally it creates a duplicate of the small rectangle pressing ⌥ (option/alt) and dragging it (4:57s) to the top right over the third "column" of the pink object. 

 

So there's wasn't a "special" tool involved. He simply created a new rectangle with the rectangle tool over the pink object which was used as reference (it picks the rectangle tool exactly at 4.22s).

[Giraffe]

Hi Giraffe,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

What he has done was to select the rectangle tool exactly at 4:22s to draw a small rectangle over the pink object using it as reference to get the correct width of the rectangle and then moved it up (4:35s). You can enable snapping in Affinity to help you draw the rectangle with the same width as the first column of the pink object. He then adjusted its position using the direct selection tool (the Node Tool in Affinity Designer) and selecting both the nodes of that small rectangle and the top two of the left column of the pink object. Finally it creates a duplicate of the small rectangle pressing ⌥ (option/alt) and dragging it (4:57s) to the top right over the third "column" of the pink object. 

 

So there's wasn't a "special" tool involved. He simply created a new rectangle with the rectangle tool over the pink object which was used as reference (it picks the rectangle tool exactly at 4.22s).

 

Thanks a lot. This is pretty embarrassing but yea I never used Illustrator before so I was just looking for flat design tutorials and trying to replicate them on Affinity.