[AD] Strokes scale with object + Nested objects

[leshido]

Hey,

Really love the software so far, it can do some pretty amazing things. I've been playing with it for over a year now, but have just recently made the jump to use it as my primary tool. So far no regrets!

Few things do bother me, though. Here's one:

I get that the "Scale with object" setting is part of the Stroke Studio rather than the Transform Studio (which is how I would usually accomplish this in Illustrator). So, when I want to scale a group in Affinity Designer, I first select it and then check that box. Usually that works well - all grouped objects get that setting no problem - but for some reason nested objects don't seem to respect it. Is this intentional? It requires me to go through EVERY nested object and set that manually.

Any chance this can be changed? I find it hard to believe anyone would expect this behavior.

Thanks!

 

[R C-R]

Interesting! I had never really thought much about this behavior, but now that you mention it I noticed this applies to other stroke properties like "Draw behind fill" & pressure curves as well. I assume this has something to do with clipped objects, but it does seem somewhat inconsistent with the Affinity Designer Layer Clipping (beta link) help topic, which states "When scaling a parent object, child (clipped) objects scale to maintain the correct aspect ratio."

 

I also noticed something weird when applying a pressure curve to a group. It works as expected on unclipped grouped objects ... except that if you use the "Properties..." button to globally set the group's 'brush width' to some stroke width, & then set a global pressure curve for the group, even though each of the group's objects shows that the pressure curve has been applied to it in the Stroke panel, the strokes don't actually use the pressure curve:

[Pšenda]

Settings (Scale with object, Draw behind fill, Pressure) is applied only to "selected" layer/object.

Ctrl + A (and other method) select only top layer/object, but not clipped object,

and this layer/object is not set.

You must select and set them separately :-(

[leshido]

I thinks both @R C-R and @Pšenda are right in that the issue isn't specifically related to the "Scale with object" setting. Changing any style property of a parent object doesn't influence it's clipped children. I can see where this is coming from - say you want to change the parent Circle's color to blue, you wouldn't necessary want all of it's children to share the same fill. However, I still think an option to quickly scale the entire object (clipped children included) and maintain stroke width is much needed.

I'd like to suggest two options for a possible solution:

1. Add a separate option to scale an object along with it's strokes and effects. This can possibly be either by checking a box in the Transform Studio (similar to Illustrator) or an entire "Scale" tool/menu (similar to Sketch).
2. Even better would be a way to specifically select the parent layer + a default way that selects the parent AND it's clipped children. This way we can quickly change any style property of the entire object, including any grouped and clipped children. If we need finer control - say changing only the parent's fill color - we would still have a way to do it. Maybe this could be accomplished by specifically selecting the parent layer in the Layers Studio?

Please consider adding such feature. I love the option to clip layers, but right now it makes a simple task such as resizing an object too elaborate.

[leshido]

On 8/19/2017 at 9:06 PM, leshido said:

Add a separate option to scale an object along with it's strokes and effects. This can possibly be either by checking a box in the Transform Studio (similar to Illustrator) or an entire "Scale" tool/menu (similar to Sketch).

After doing some more work with Affinity Designer, I came into more and more situations where I wish we would have this option.

As it turns out, layer effects also need to be set to "Scale with Object". In addition, I couldn't find a way to scale text on a path - it only scales the path, but the font size remains the same regardless.

Between this and the original issue, I mean come on - scaling an object so that it looks the same on every size is practically impossible.

[MEB]

Hi leshido,

Welcome to Affinity Forum

A global scale toggle was already suggested/requested some time ago but it wasn't implemented yet. To scale text on a path, use the bottom-right handle (the one that's detached from the object's bounding box) instead of the regular one.

[leshido]

On 8/23/2017 at 4:56 PM, MEB said:

Hi leshido,

Welcome to Affinity Forum

A global scale toggle was already suggested/requested some time ago but it wasn't implemented yet. To scale text on a path, use the bottom-right handle (the one that's detached from the object's bounding box) instead of the regular one.

Hi @MEB, thanks for the tip!

Using the bottom-right handle for scaling does the trick (and it even shows on any group that contains a text-on-a-path). One problem though is that using the handle to scale isn't accurate enough, and there doesn't seem to be a way to enter exact dimensions and have the text scale along with the path (like one could use the Transform Studio for). Is this right?

In any case, I'm happy to hear a "global scale toggle" was already requested. I looked through the Common Feature Requests INDEX and the roadmap and didn't see it mentioned. Hope to see this feature implemented soon.

[yeffdaley]

This is happening to me as well, and find it unintuitive and tedious to work around. +1 for improvements to this function.

[lucasrato]

Any news on this?

[hologram]

+1 for making this feature happen. It's a very important feature. Any updates on this happening?

[dcrosby]

+1 as well. Please make it happen

[lalcimo]

Please work on this Serif. 

Include the resizing of rounded corners as well (without having to bake the corners).

[gabrielsiml]

+1 as well. I immediately ran into a problem with this. I had a design with 40 or 50 lines in a crosshatch pattern duplicated 5 or 6 times. Find out that my document is ten times larger than it needs to be and couldn't scale without baking (expand appearance from AI). I started to go through to select scale stroke from every group. Then I noticed that I had two strokes and I was supposed to select each stroke and click scales with object? Nope! I ended up having to render the entire thing and scale that way.

Multiple strokes? also have to select scale with object? Are we saying that if we have effects AND strokes AND type, that we have to select scale with object AND use some weird scale handle? I am a few hours in and have not been disappointed until now.

It seems like maybe the issue is that this is default to off? What negative effect is there to having it default to on?

[Detus]

+1

Just ran into the same thing and its slightly frustrating to say the least. I love AD, I wouldn't use anything else, I just hope the Devs see this and implement it.

[iococoi]

+1

shortcut/default option..either would be helpful..right now, it's kind of frustrating.

[HappyLlama]

This is something that baked my noodle for some time but one workaround I found was to save the artwork or element that you're wanting to resize as its own file, and then place it either into a new document or even the current one, as it treats it as a new embedded file, at which point you can then scale it as much as you want.

[Checkmate]

Any update on a global 'scale with object' toggle?

I think this should apply to Strokes and Effects (effects are even harder to manage in this regard as you have to select each object and then go into its FX setting to tick the box).

[mckinley416]

+1

Scaling a group takes much longer when having to independently set it’s  interior line widths. This is my #1 request.

[Pontus]

It's a serious problem that you can't easily chose to scale everything. Having several strokes makes scaling a disturbing thing! 

[DesignerMim by Miriam]

Oh my gosh YES!! I don't have many grumbles about AD but when I have to resize my illustrations this process it wastes so much time! It gets super frustrating. The quickest way I've found is to expand the strokes - but that's NOT first prize cos sometimes I'd like to make tweaks further down the line. It would be wonderful if the dev's priorities this feature!

[Pontus]

43 minutes ago, designermim said:

Oh my gosh YES!! I don't have many grumbles about AD but when I have to resize my illustrations this process it wastes so much time! It gets super frustrating. The quickest way I've found is to expand the strokes - but that's NOT first prize cos sometimes I'd like to make tweaks further down the line. It would be wonderful if the dev's priorities this feature!

I also noticed that when you expand the stroke of multiple objects, AD crashes too. Maybe it's because I use several strokes. Anyway, this is quite an issue that they need to take care of!

[loxy]

On 3/10/2021 at 10:20 PM, HappyLlama said:

This is something that baked my noodle for some time but one workaround I found was to save the artwork or element that you're wanting to resize as its own file, and then place it either into a new document or even the current one, as it treats it as a new embedded file, at which point you can then scale it as much as you want.

Thank you! This is good enough for me and saved me a lot of time. 

[lalcimo]

For anyone still having problems with this, my co-worker discovered a workaround for this.

You can just select all kinds of objects then apply Scale with Object.

Go to:
Select > Select Object > Pick a category here > Then tick Scale with Object

While they're are selected, you could also Scale with object the FX as well.

Edited November 21, 2021 by lalcimo

[fruid]

I have the same issue, both on desktop and iPad. It's annoying if you consider the fact that you cannot set the export size of a PDF. So when I realised the latter, I had to resize my artwork manually before exporting and was confronted with the former issue.

Should I post this to the iPad forum or is this the same?

[GenewalDesign]

Bumping this issue. Please find a way to apply the "scale to object" to ALL objects (including nested) when everything is selected.