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Shapes to guides in affinity designer


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@v_kyr In Illustrator you can create a shape and convert that shape to guides, so for the sake of clarity lets draw a triangle, once you have converted the shape to a guide you can use the triangles sloping sides to draw a line.

@seanb You could just draw a shape, lock the layer and use snapping to follow the shape edge (guide) not an ideal solution but maybe workable.

You can use View > Guide Manager for accurate horizontal and Vertical guide placement but I suspect its the use of "angled guides" you are looking to create.

You can create any shape or line and manipulate it from the transform panel too.

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@Jonopen @firstdefence Ah Ok thanks I think I know now what is meant ...

Quote

...Guides are not just limited to ruler lines though. You can use any pretty much any path to make a guide. This means you can use a rectanlge, circle or hand-drawn path as a guide. To do this draw the shape or path as you would normally do then go to View > Guides > Make Guide. The shortcut is Apple 5 or Ctrl 5 on Windows...

No unfortunalety AD doesn't have such a feature yet.

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From a practical standpoint, would putting the guide shapes in a locked layer group & using snapping accomplish the same thing as having a dedicated Guides layer? If desired, that locked group could be placed at the top of the layer stack & its opacity and/or blend mode set to something suitable.

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As an aids help workaround yes, though you might end here then with a bunch of additional layers which you will have to keep care of then, like distinguish these them from usual layers, arranging them in the layers hierarchy, have always to toggle off their visibility for print etc. and so on. All in all the administrative expenses are higher.

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1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

As a aids workaround yes, though you might end here then with a bunch of additional layers which you will have to keep care of then, like distinguish these them from usual layers, arranging them in the layers hierarchy, have always to toggle off their visibility for print etc. and so on. All in all the administrative expenses are higher.

I know this requires more care, but putting all such layers in a locked group & naming it something distinctive like say "GUIDES - Hide for Print" minimizes the extra administrative expense. To make this even more distinctive, the group could be converted to a "(Layer)" layer -- there has to be a better way to say that! -- & assigned a different layer color in the Properties popup menu.

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26 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

As an aids help workaround yes, though you might end here then with a bunch of additional layers which you will have to keep care of then, like distinguish these them from usual layers, arranging them in the layers hierarchy, have always to toggle off their visibility for print etc. and so on. All in all the administrative expenses are higher.

 

Set them all to bright orange or similar and group them. In Designer you could colour the layer they are in to orange so the selection boxes are orange too.

 

Can't do much about having to switch the layer off for printing though. :(

2018-01-14_132542.jpg.cbbf55112f9a97c89bf2175a7d2b2a97.jpg

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17 minutes ago, toltec said:

Can't do much about having to switch the layer off for printing though. :(

If you can avoid any more "senior moments" then you should be fine. 301.gif

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36 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If you can avoid any more "senior moments" then you should be fine. 301.gif

 

I meant that there is no way to avoid having to do that. well, unless you are slicing.

 

I think this does it ?

 

5a5b688e260d9_slicedanddiced.jpg.57f8fbb2e68cbe0810c67b46d8fb39db.jpg

 

I must admit I am not 100% on that.

 

 

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@toltec, I just meant you do have to remember to switch off the layer, & avoiding senior moments (like we discussed in a couple of other recent topics) is part of that.

 

IOW, it was a lame joke.

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1 minute ago, R C-R said:

@toltec, I just meant you do have to remember to switch off the layer, & avoiding senior moments (like we discussed in a couple of other recent topics) is part of that.

 

IOW, it was a lame joke.

 

Layer ? What layer ? 

 

Sorry sonny, my memory isn't what it used to be. 301.gif

 

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all well and good in a simple way use these shapes as guide so they would not have to print in illustrator have line and convert to guides you don"t have to slice or hide layers

in a simple way.

why is that not possible with designer

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12 hours ago, seanb said:

all well and good in a simple way use these shapes as guide so they would not have to print in illustrator have line and convert to guides you don"t have to slice or hide layers

in a simple way.

why is that not possible with designer

Maybe put a post in the 'Feature request' forum section for consideration, explaining exactly when, how and why etc you would use shape guides. 

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34 minutes ago, Jonopen said:

Maybe put a post in the 'Feature request' forum section for consideration, explaining exactly when, how and why etc you would use shape guides. 

Supporting guide layers almost certainly would require yet another change to the native Affinity file format, & like the last time that was done it would almost certainly mean we had to contend with older versions of the apps not being able to open at least some files saved in the newer format.

 

I wonder if it is worth the hassle ....

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10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Supporting guide layers almost certainly would require yet another change to the native Affinity file format, & like the last time that was done it would almost certainly mean we had to contend with older versions of the apps not being able to open at least some files saved in the newer format.

 

I wonder if it is worth the hassle ....

 

Maybe if they introduced a simple non-printing (or non output) layer command ?

 

That way you could use shapes and snapping (as described above) but switch the layer off for output.

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They [Shape guides] sound like a good idea on paper but I'm just not sure how useful they are in reality. I've had them available in another app for years and beyond a bit of experimentation, have never found a practical use for them. But then obviously that's just me...

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27 minutes ago, toltec said:

Maybe if they introduced a simple non-printing (or non output) layer command ?

Can't we already do that using the visibility checkbox?

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2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Can't we already do that using the visibility checkbox?

 

Yes, but you have to remember to tick it off/on every time. Some might find this too much of a burden ;)

 

At least it would prevent the need for much programming or "changing the file format". I assume a button would be easy to do ?

 

Personally, I have never found a use to draw guides, but some do, obviously.

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3 hours ago, R C-R said:

Supporting guide layers almost certainly would require yet another change to the native Affinity file format, & like the last time that was done it would almost certainly mean we had to contend with older versions of the apps not being able to open at least some files saved in the newer format.

 

I wonder if it is worth the hassle ....

Where do you know this from, without knowing how it is generally modeled/designed for the apps and internally implemented in code? - So you make assumptions but can't tell for sure here.

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5 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Where do you know this from, without knowing how it is generally modeled/designed for the apps and internally implemented in code? - So you make assumptions but can't tell for sure here.

I am not claiming to know this for sure. But guide layers would be a new type of layer not currently supported, so how else could they be supported without some change in the file format to indicate a document contained that type of layer & which layer(s) of that type they were?

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Where is the data for common guides lines and grids etc. stored? - Visually I wouldn't like to see such things shown inside the common layers panel UI among other usual shown layers. Since these would be IMO more another sort of visual help aids they should have an own associated collection list. Probably the Affinity file format has open room for new additions, otherwise they never could add new features or add-ons which need to have some sort of persistence here.

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1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Where is the data for common guides lines and grids etc. stored?

If I understand your question correctly, as best as I can tell the grid settings must be stored in the native format document file. That is because when I open an Affinity file saved with any grid other than the default automatic one, that same grid layout persists, independently of any grid stored in any other file. 

 

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Probably the Affinity file format has open room for new additions, otherwise they never could add new features or add-ons which need to have some sort of persistence here.

I think for new additions it must depend on the scope of the feature added, the amount of file format space that must be allocated to supporting it, its impact on serialization within the file, any changes it might require in how existing features are stored in the file, & so on. Even for something that seems as simple as adding a new layer type, there may not be enough unallocated space in the format to do all that.

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11 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If I understand your question correctly, as best as I can tell the grid settings must be stored in the native format document file. That is because when I open an Affinity file saved with any grid other than the default automatic one, that same grid layout persists, independently of any grid stored in any other file.

That's clear, though I meant more here that those are probably not stored among the layers data structures/section at all and instead will have their own variable regions.

14 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think for new additions it must depend on the scope of the feature added, the amount of file format space that must be allocated to supporting it, its impact on serialization within the file, any changes it might require in how existing features are stored in the file, & so on. Even for something that seems as simple as adding a new layer type, there may not be enough unallocated space in the format to do all that.

We can't say for sure here and thus only speculate, since we don't know the underlayed technical structure and specs of the file format. However, "...where there is a will, there is usually also a way". - I pretty much believe their file format will have enough room for additional variable regions/sections to allocate as much space as needed, otherwise you wouldn't be able to put a variable size of layers, assets, styles, brushes... and who knows what else inside. Also these are things you usually take into account when designing a file format, you have to think also that there might be additional other needed things in future, which you actually don't have yet included or can think about, but your format has to be overall flexible enough to be able to address and deal with that then. - So to say to foresee the unpredictable.

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