Text orientation after canvas rotated

[janetes]

In the forums, it appears as though the answers to my Q are to use a Frame Text tool, but the topics are a year old and I wonder if I've missed something. The canvas opens in portrait mode and I want to work with it in landscape. I can rotate it but text enters in the original orientation, so 90 degrees deviated from how it will be used/read. Many small segments of text throughout the canvas are needed. Can you suggest the most expedient solution? Thank you. 

[IanSG]

 I'm not sure if I've fully grasped the problem, but If you rotate the document, rather than the canvas, the text aligns correctly.

[janetes]

Thank you. Do you mean that when the file opens, rather than View>Rotate Left, which is what I have been doing that rotates the canvas and results in text being typed vertically, I should have been in Document Setup > Dimensions and made sure that Portrait is not checked. I tried that but it didn't work. Is there another way to rotate a document? 

[MEB]

Hi janetes,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Go to menu Document ▸ Rotate 90º Clockwise (or Rotate 90º Anticlockwise as you see fit). The Rotate commands in the View menu only rotate the view of the document - to help skecthing with a pen/tablet for example - they don't rotate the document itself as the commands found in the Document menu.

[janetes]

Thank you. I've attached the file. The Menu items that you suggested are greyed when the file opens, because each line is a vector? Might there be another workaround? If I were to duplicate the view of the file and work with that perhaps? The CAD program that created the file uses those vectored lines to design a die that will cut the rows into strips, but I don't need them for my work, which is to fill in each square shape with a colour. I appreciate your help and time. 

V1700196-Oct20-17 copy.afdesign

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, janetes said:

The Menu items that you suggested are greyed when the file opens ...

What menu items? You attached an .afdesgn file, which by default opens in Affinity Designer. There is no Document menu in Affinity Designer, only in Affinity Photo. Which app are you using?

 

If you are using AD, you can select all from the Select menu & then rotate the canvas with the Layer menu > Transform > Rotate Left (or Rotate Right) item. You will need to resize the canvas, easily done with the File > Document Setup > Dimensions tab by selecting "Anchor to Page," setting the anchor point to the center one, & unchecking the Portrait checkbox.

 

I'm not sure where the text you mentioned in your first post comes into it, but to fill in the squares, you will need to join the 8 lines of each of them individually to create curves. That is going to be very tedious so an alternative is to do that for one square & then use power duplicate & snapping to create the rest of them, & then delete the jillion lines you no longer need. Attached is V1700196 copy rotated.afdesign I made using this method, plus a symbol for the larger rectangular strips.

[janetes]

Thank you. I was referring to the menu items suggested by MEB. I'm in AD. I will fill in the squares with different colours. I use the rectangle tool to make the shape, add a fill, duplicate the shape, move it down to the next square, and give it a new fill colour. The text will be numbers beneath each square of colour. The squares show me where to position the rectangle when I move it. For Export, I hide the grid background.  The file you made is very useful. If you could tell me how to delete all the red fill  and leave the gray squares outlines, it would be great. When I hide the small squares layer, the gray outlines disappear as well.

[R C-R]

26 minutes ago, janetes said:

If you could tell me how to delete all the red fill  and leave the gray squares outlines, it would be great.

Select the "small squares" group & set the fill to none. One way to do that is with the Color panel by (1) making sure the fill color well is selected & (2) clicking on the tiny 'no color' button:

It can also be done in the Context toolbar's Fill popup by selecting either the None or Swatches tab & clicking on the small white color square with the red slash through it.

[MEB]

Hi janetes,

I thought you were using Affinity Photo. These commands are not available in Designer, sorry.

[janetes]

 I esp appreciate the help learning and these tips are working great. Going along nicely, I've managed to disappear the larger rectangular strips. So sorry about this.  I haven't deleted anything and have been through the Undo sequence and History but can't seem to retrieve them. Possibly I've somehow selected them and made their Stroke into None, but where are they? Upper and Lower are the circles and Small Squares are the squares, but where is the symbol for the strips? This may be an impossible Q for you to answer remotely and I can upload the file if I can't resolve my own error. Thank you. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, janetes said:

Upper and Lower are the circles and Small Squares are the squares, but where is the symbol for the strips?

Unless you have changed something in the version I uploaded, the Upper & Lower groups each consist 20 instances of a symbol named simply "Shape 1." That symbol has two child layers, one for the circle & the other for the 8 sided curve, that together create the strip shape that is repeated 40 times in the file (20 for each of the two rows).

 

So if you toggle off the visibility of the Upper & Lower groups in the Layers panel, all you should see are the small squares & the large rectangle that encloses everything.

[janetes]

What happened was that the size of the stroke around the long rectangles somehow got up to 25pt, so the whole background was blue. In bringing it back to 0.2 pt, the shapes reappeared just fine. Rather than adjust them one at a time, which I'm happy to do, in the interest of honing my AD skills, is there a way to adjust all those layers at once? I tried to Select one, then Shift/Select the next one but the first one just de-selected. Thank you. 

[R C-R]

48 minutes ago, janetes said:

is there a way to adjust all those layers at once?

If you mean the ones containing the "Shape 1" symbol, just select any one instance of the rectangle layer in the symbol group & change its stroke. The others should automatically change along with it. That's how symbols work.

[janetes]

Thanks for working through this, R C-R. I'm learning. 
I think it forgot it was a symbol. The shapes switch over individually just fine, but not as a group. Is there a way to check or remind it to act like a symbol?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, janetes said:

Is there a way to check or remind it to act like a symbol?

I am not sure what you mean by that. If you select an instance of the symbol rather than an instance of its rectangular child layer, you can change the stroke, but doing that would change the stroke of both child layers. I assumed that is not what you wanted to do.

[janetes]

Lower (Group) opens up into a list of Shape 1 (symbol). 

 

Each Shape 1 (symbol) has two child layers of circle (curve) and rectangle (curve). 

 

Oh yes, I see, it's the two together that make up the Symbol and all I want to do is change the stroke of the child layers with the rectangle. 

 

Ok, getting it. To change the stroke of the rectangle (curve) layer only, and leave the circle (curve)  layers as they are, might there be a way to do that?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, janetes said:

To change the stroke of the rectangle (curve) layer only, and leave the circle (curve)  layers as they are, might there be a way to do that?

As I said, "just select any one instance of the rectangle layer in the symbol group & change its stroke."