FreeHand Find & Replace

[chirpy]

I'd like to make a request for something I used ALL the time in Macromedia FreeHand: the Find & Replace Graphics panel.

It is one of the most time saving and amazing things even put into graphics software and I miss it greatly. Adobe still has a page up with some very old looking screenshots of it from Mac OS 9: https://www.adobe.com/support/freehand/programs/creating_animations/creating_animations03.html

 

You could basically find anything in your document and replace it with something completely different. Colors, strokes, stroke widths, symbols, overprint attributes. The list goes on. It was an amazing boon to productivity when dealing with very detailed illustrations or many-page documents.

[MattP]

Hi Chirpy,

 

I know exactly what you mean and I think we've already mentioned it on the forums before - we'll be adding it as soon as we can get around to it :) 

 

Thanks,

Matt

[k_au]

Just noted this ancient thread 🙂 
@MattP, can you tell us anything new about this cool idea?

[ashf]

That's related to this thread.

 

[MattP]

2 hours ago, k_au said:

Just noted this ancient thread 🙂 
@MattP, can you tell us anything new about this cool idea?

I can tell you that 'Select Same' is one of the next things I'm going to be implementing...  

[MikeW]

10 minutes ago, MattP said:

I can tell you that 'Select Same' is one of the next things I'm going to be implementing...  

Hopefully not using dialogs--unless the user opts to go whole hog. Illy's implementation is simple and pretty elegant.

[ashf]

12 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Hopefully not using dialogs--unless the user opts to go whole hog. Illy's implementation is simple and pretty elegant.

Similar to Publisher's Find&Replace that's as a Studio panel would be good I think.
Or they should be one panel.

[robinp]

20 minutes ago, MattP said:

I can tell you that 'Select Same' is one of the next things I'm going to be implementing...  

🤯 

[Josh Neufeld]

Oh, holy smokes - didn't realize. Might be good news!

@MattP Feel free to share details here that you think helpful for the over-the-top curious folks who think about this more than is healthy.

Cautiously optimistic...

[MattP]

The first version will be very simple but functional - along the lines of Illustrator, as mentioned by MikeW. It will not be a Find + Replace, that will come later. It will be, as stated, a 'Select Same' with a number of variants and easily assignable to keyboard shortcuts for productivity's sake...

[ashf]

8 minutes ago, MattP said:

The first version will be very simple but functional - along the lines of Illustrator, as mentioned by MikeW. It will not be a Find + Replace, that will come later. It will be, as stated, a 'Select Same' with a number of variants and easily assignable to keyboard shortcuts for productivity's sake...

I will be able to select matched objects also without replacing something?

Edit: sorry I missed "Select Same".

[Josh Neufeld]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

The first version will be very simple but functional - along the lines of Illustrator, as mentioned by MikeW. It will not be a Find + Replace, that will come later. It will be, as stated, a 'Select Same' with a number of variants and easily assignable to keyboard shortcuts for productivity's sake...

Fantastic! Even the first simple version will be a gamechanger. Thanks for the update! 

[MattP]

@ashf Yes, 'Find & Replace' will be essentially the ability to select with much more specific filtering, then an optional 'Replace' that you can specify attributes to replace them with. This will come later. Initially, a simple ability to select objects with the same fill, geometry, stroke, etc will give the app the majority of the functionality users are requesting

[robinp]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

@ashf Yes, 'Find & Replace' will be essentially the ability to select with much more specific filtering, then an optional 'Replace' that you can specify attributes to replace them with. This will come later. Initially, a simple ability to select objects with the same fill, geometry, stroke, etc will give the app the majority of the functionality users are requesting

This is excellent.

[k_au]

Woohoo! Thank you very much, that sounds very nice!

[Dazmondo77]

MattP this is great news 

[debussy]

Great guys!! Thank you so much!!!

Please consider also people who have to work with dwg/dxf files and technical plans.

We can all together find an intelligent way of making it happen or find good workarounds/workflows.

Architects & Designers are an important group of clients and potential clients.

Affinity Designer is a wonderful piece of software, we all do love it. That's why we care about integrating it into our workflows and marekts!

[JET_Affinity]

On ‎4‎/‎29‎/‎2020 at 4:02 PM, MikeW said:

Hopefully not using dialogs--unless the user opts to go whole hog. Illy's implementation is simple and pretty elegant.

Dialogs?

FreeHand's GF&R (if that's what you're referring to) was not dialogs. It was a dedicated non-modal palette. And it was not at all onerous to use for simple "select same" functionality. Even when selecting objects of the same value, it was right there, on my second monitor, already configured with the settings I need. I didn't have to repeatedly dig down to a second-tier sub-menu under the primary menu bar each and every time I used one of its options.

"Select Same" means just that: The same weight,  color, whatever. So for example, you're working with a complicated file in which someone has been working in a typically unorganized willy-nilly fashion (not defining graphic styles or 'global swatches' ), and has been scaling things slightly with the "scale strokes" option on—one of the most common situations for which select-by-attribute is used; to apply consistent weights to line work.

So there are dozens, if not hundreds of paths with stroke weights of .25 pt, .275 pt, 2.6 pt.... Select Same is pretty tedious there.

The initial basic implementation of this needs to at least provide for specifying a range of values. Yes, it would of course default to the "same" value; but the slider or "from" and "to" or "tolerance" or whatever, fields need to be provided and cleanly integrated.

JET

[JET_Affinity]

People not familiar with it need to understand: "Graphic Find & Replace" was the name for FreeHand's search-by-attribute feature set. It didn't mean it was always used to replace the found attributes with a different value. It could be used to find OR to find and replace.

For example, if you are dealing with stroke weight, you don't need to find (i.e., select) AND replace. Once paths of the specified weight (or range) are selected, you can simply use the standard interface to apply the desired weight to the then-current selection. Same goes for fill colors and most other graphic attributes.

But there are other objects for which normal selection doesn't do the job. Selecting applications of a specific graphic style (a combination of multiple attributes) and replacing them with a different style, for example. Or finding  individually applied character-level text attributes across multiple separate text fields and changing them to a defined character-level style. And so on.

FreeHand's GF&R could be used as simply or as sophisticatedly as one needed. That's elegance. Elegance is not mere functionally-limited simplicity.

JET

 

[ashf]

6 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

Dialogs?

FreeHand's GF&R (if that's what you're referring to) was not dialogs. It was a dedicated non-modal palette. And it was not at all onerous to use for simple "select same" functionality. Even when selecting objects of the same value, it was right there, on my second monitor, already configured with the settings I need. I didn't have to repeatedly dig down to a second-tier sub-menu under the primary menu bar each and every time I used one of its options.

I think MikeW means like Adobe's which is a modal dialog but Freehand's

[Karen the quilter]

I'm brand new here and hoping this is on its way (or even here already). If not ready yet, when can I expect this feature? How will it be publicized?

How are people currently doing this without a feature for select same?

 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Karen the quilter said:

I'm brand new here and hoping this is on its way (or even here already). If not ready yet, when can I expect this feature? How will it be publicized?

How are people currently doing this without a feature for select same?

 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

No, this feature does not exist yet, and Serif does not comment on when new features might be implemented, so we have no idea if it will be implemented nor when.

As for publicizing it, it will first appear in a beta version of the Affinity applications, so if you watch the betas you will know when it is coming. Also, each new release of the Affinity applications has a feature list posted here in the forums containing the major additions. You'll find them pinned near the top of the News forum. For major feature requests they often will update the feature request threads related to the new feature.