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Is there a "Live mirror" option?


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That would save time not having to flip and join or copy and join something you need symmetrical.  If it was some sort of live symmetrical editing that would be epic... it would ideally have to be a "mode" horizontal or vertical, to work across a number of tools and operations (scale, rotate, booleans etc...)

 

This is a good example of borrowing something that's very common and useful in 3d apps for a 2d workflow...

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Sure.  It's something that I discovered while I was messing around, trying to set up an iOS icon template.  I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere, or even intended behavior--perhaps MattP can weigh in.

 

1. Save your document.

2. Equip the Place Image Tool.

3. When the file dialog pops up, select the file that you're currently working on.

4. Place a box anywhere.  You now have an embedded document.  It's populated with the contents of your current document.

5. Double-click the embedded document to edit it.  You can clear out what's in there and put whatever you like.  It doesn't seem to be linked to anything.

6. Back in your main document, copy and paste your embedded document layer.

7. Layer > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

 

What it looks like is that changing the embedded document adjusts your main document in realtime--but only the layer that you started editing from.  You can update any other layers by zooming in or out a little bit.

 

Again, this may not particularly be intended behavior.  Perhaps I broke something, but it's sure useful for setting up an icon template like this.

 

I'm on AD 1.1.2 from the App Store.

 

Edit: Oh, I realize that I'm posting in the Beta section--whoops.  I'm not using the Beta, sorry!

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...hehe, you have created a monster Matt! 

 

I got it to work tooolbox and it does what you've outlined, but its not an ideal workflow of course. :)  Plus if I want to edit one object symmetrically like a face for example, it seems to only work on two objects - the two embedded objects...

 

Would love to see a nice simple "symmetry mode" solution from the Affinity team that mirrors either horizontally or vertically (or both) editing actions in real time. It's a "down the road" request.  ;)

 

What I see this workflow might be great for would be a symbol like behaviour. Create one "cog" for example, embed it, create a machine using a few copied cogs, edit the original, all update simultaneously...

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  • 10 months later...

So this is kind of like instancing or more like referencing in 3D applications? I guess AI's closest thing is symbols but that's not quite the same.

 

Good to know, I was doing a search on mirroring and saw that it's in Affinity Photo but it doesn't look like it's in Design yet. I use the Mirror me plugin a lot- but mostly just for 1 axis mirroring so this is perfect.

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Any more development on this Matt?

 

I think some sort of well thought out symmetry ability would be a good draw (no pun intended) to a lot of potential users. Is there anything similar in Ai now? I could have really used symmetry on a recent project, would have saved a ton of time flipping and joining...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Would be great if this could be generalized into an "instances/clones" duplication method; Instances that retain their link to the parent, and are:

- updated live when their Boba Fett (original curve) changes - or maybe changing any of these instances, causes all the other instances to change at the same time

- transformable - eg. mirror, scale, skew etc

- able to become part of compound objects  - eg. a union between original and mirrored live-instance

- able to have properties such as their stroke/fill/styles overloaded

 

Okay, I exhausted my wishful thinking, for the day ;-)

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