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Convert to Symmetric Node


al465

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In my opinion Affinity designer is a remarkable tool regarding how new it is. My compliments to the entire development team. 

 

There is one point of critique, though, which is that in my opinion it is not "The first OSX vector drawing app that has figured out how to do Bezier curves correctly" (besides, what matters is being best not first). Coming from an Inkscape background and having used apps with very limited bezier drawing capabilities (e.g. the old pages) it feels natural to have "symmetrical" nodes, meaning nodes where the tangent handles are constrained to have both the same slope and length.

Currently one has to use shift and snapping to achieve this result on a tangent, but moving one tangent of course does not preserve this relation. 

The reason one might want a symmetrical node is to achieve a "better" smoothness where the curve is not just G(1) but C(1) continuous (where the derivative at that point does not just exist but is also continuous). 

 

In my opinion this is a fundamental type of node and deserves its own button in the convert section of the node tool. 

 

Even a key binding would do if not otherwise possible.

 

If this is an intentional design decision, I'd like to see the reasoning behind it. 

I hope this is not a duplicate request or has been implemented in the current beta, in that case: great job and keep going.

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  • Staff

Hi al465,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

By default the Pen mode (see Mode section on the context toolbar) does create symmetrical control handles when you're drawing with the Pen Tool ensuring smooth paths during their creation. Only the Node tool doesn't provide a way to make the control handles symmetric simultaneously. Pressing the shift key only solves this problem partially. However neither the Pen/Node tools neither the snapping system are finished yet. Ben is still working on/adding more snapping controls and fine tuning their behaviour. This is probably one of those omissions that weren't implemented/finished on time. If you wait a little longer all those issues will be ironed out and you will be able to force symmetrical handles within the Node tool too.

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  • 1 year later...

There is one point of critique, though, which is that in my opinion it is not "The first OSX vector drawing app that has figured out how to do Bezier curves correctly" (besides, what matters is being best not first).

 

To be fair, that wasn’t Affinity’s team claim, it was a testimonial by a user.

 

It is completely false, though, as not only is there no innovation in the way it does bezier curves (nothing new that Illustrator and others haven’t done for years), it doesn’t even do them correctly many times.

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  • 2 years later...

Symmetrical nodes are indeed missing. Now that the pen tool supports it, I see no reason why the node tool shouldn't.

At least a keyboard shortcut should enable it when dragging a handle.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
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