[Designer] Rotate and Snap?

[Igull]

Sometimes I just find Designer infuriating in the way that things (don't :-) work.

I have  a process where I drag in a scanned pdf plan in the background as a drawing guide. Occasionally, it's not orthogonal to the drawing limits due to some scan misalignment - whatever.

The issue is that in Illustrator (my daily tool of choice unfortunately), the process is simply clicking on the scan, hit R to rotate, click a point to rotate by then pick a point on the scan to snap to that horizontal guide you created - simples, done - lock it and your ready to go.

I can't find ANY way to rotate an object and snap a point to a guide using designer.

Here's the test, pull down a guide, create a rectangle (as the object to rotate instead of a pdf scan) and rotate it manually - any angle. Grab the top LH corner and snap it to the guide (that in itself is a royal PITA - select the node tool, click a node, select all then snap that node to the guideline - arghhhhhh, give me strength, who thought that up, just SO unintuitive ). Ok, we now have  a corner snapped to the guide. Let's say we want an opposite node to be orthogonal to the guide - no way. You can eyeball rotate it, but you can't snap. Even the rotate is a PITA, use the move tool, select the rectangle, then move the rotate axis object to the node that is on the guide (the node having been snapped to the guide in the previous process), then pick whatever opposite node you want snapped to the guide (without resizing the object of course - that is absolutely IMPERATIVE !!!!!).

Before I die, I'd like a simpler way for this to work :-))))))) Actually, I'd just like this to work - simply like illustrator if at all humanly possible.

I thought I only had a couple of issues before I could make this my daily routine - but now it's three :-)) An offset tool, an attributes picker (not a colo(u)r picker) and rotation with snap :-) Oh, and a snap redesign using the move tool, NOT the node tool /rant :-)

Cheers

Neil

PS Apologies if I come across as being annoyed, it's just that I am, I really want to make this my one app and not have to keep jumping back to $$$$$$illustrator  :-)

[gdenby]

Hi, Igull,

Don't worry about the annoyance. Lots of people trying to move from AI to AD show that. Usually it is mostly a matter of learning new habits. I doubt Designer will ever work the same way as Illustrator. Basic differences in how the shapes are made and modified. There will disruptions in routine.

But, you a quite right. There isn't any way as far as I can tell to snap the center of rotation to  guides at present. 

From my experience, AD has features that AI had after 5 - 10 years. A few, well beyond that.  What you describe was once nothing AI could do. Believe me, Illustrator after 10 years of admittedly ground breaking development was still not faster or easier to use than a drafting board and Letraset press ons. IMPERATIVE may have taken 30 years. If you have to have some features, at the moment it doesn't seem you have many options other than the Adobe ecosystem.

Myself, the $$$$$ are not an issue. Its the subscription model, and the apparent necessity to be connected to Adobe network. 

Referring to an attributes picker, Designer does allow copying layer "styles," which are a combination of stroke and fill attributes. Those can be pasted as a style, just as easy as using the color picker.

 

[Aammppaa]

2 hours ago, Igull said:

Grab the top LH corner and snap it to the guide (that in itself is a royal PITA - select the node tool, click a node, select all then snap that node to the guideline - arghhhhhh, give me strength, who thought that up, just SO unintuitive )

I have no issue snapping a rotated rectangle to a guide, simply by dragging it to the guide!

50 minutes ago, gdenby said:

There isn't any way as far as I can tell to snap the center of rotation to  guides at present. 

I can snap rotation centers to guides, simply by dragging it to the guide!

Here is a way to straighten your PDF scans…

1. Place your image to be straightened.
2. Draw a rectangle over the image, aligned to the edge you are trying to straighten
   • NOTE: Hold rightmouse (on PC) to draw a rotated rectangle along a line.
3. In Layers Panel drop your image inside the rectangle.
4. Straighten the rectangle, holding Shift, so that it snaps to horizontal.
5. In Layers Panel drag image out of the rectangle.
6. Delete rectangle.

Alternatively: If you own Photo, the crop tool has a straighten function.

https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/pages/SizeTransform/cropping.html

[gdenby]

 

  13 hours ago, gdenby said:

There isn't any way as far as I can tell to snap the center of rotation to  guides at present. 

I can snap rotation centers to guides, simply by dragging it to the guide!

 

OK, my hand must have been a mess yesterday. It was raining, and my arthritis was off the charts. Every time I dragged the center to the guides, it would end up just slightly off. Guess I couldn't even manipulate the mouse. Worked fine this morning. Checked in the transform dialog, and it was accurate to 2 decimal points.

Thanks for correcting that Aammppaa.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, gdenby said:

Every time I dragged the center to the guides, it would end up just slightly off. Guess I couldn't even manipulate the mouse.

Either that or maybe 'snap to guides' was not enabled in the Snapping Manager. I have been caught out by that more times than I like to admit. 

[Igull]

@gdenby - yes, you're  right, so I'm not alone then :-) I need to take a step back from it all and take a second look rather than just expecting tools to work the way that AI does. However, tools really should be completely intuitive and NOT require a half hour delving through forum posts to find out where you are going wrong - the whole 'node tool' snapping scenario is a case in point. Different doesn't make better.

The 'rotation centre' (called a 'fulcrum' back in the 20th century - and probably further - why change it to two words :-) ) can actually be snapped to a guide - only using the 'move' tool - however, as it disappears using the 'node' tool, contrary to public opinion, you then can't rotate and snap another node to the/a guide.

OK on the 'attributes picker' - I've had a look at the styles option and it will work OK for me for what I do - thanks for that. However, not nearly as simple and tidy as the 'eyedropper tool' in AI :-)

@Aammppaa - thanks for taking the time to create all the wee gifs, it's appreciated - must find out how to do that on my mac ! Perhaps my choice of a regular rectangle wasn't the best concept, the issue isn't with the snapping of bounding boxes which is inherently easy in AD (whether the object is rotated or not). Try rotating some odd shaped polygon using say opposing polygon points - one as the 'rotation centre' the other as the point that requires to be snapped to the guide.

Yes, the 'rotation centre' can be snapped to a (say) a guide, but while that is wonderful, you are back to the problem in the previous paragraph, you can't snap an opposite (say) point to a guide.

On the rectangle on the PDF solution, that doesn't work, in principle, it looks like it is working, but on the final rotation, it is not snapping to the guide (afaics :-)  )

Sadly, with a rectangle, you can't even use the node tool to do it - not that you can rotate with the node tool anyway :-)

I have photo, but I'm looking for a one-stop process, not a multilateral set of tools :-))))) I can do it all in AI with 2 clicks - why would I choose to open photo to do it :-)

Neverthless, I really do appreciate the effort !

BTW, while delving into your solution, I came across a really annoying 'bug' - guides only show on the artboard and not on the background - arghh! I then found that to remove guides you drag them off the artboard - even worse :-) However, if you actually draw guides on the lower half of the background - they still exist but you can't see them - you CAN see them if you attempt to move a previous guide from the artboard - they highlight as soon as you move a guide. Further, you CAN actually snap to them if you know where they are ????????

Cheers

Neil

 

[Aammppaa]

3 hours ago, Igull said:

Perhaps my choice of a regular rectangle wasn't the best concept…

Try [snapping] some odd shaped polygon.

Yes you are correct that to snap the nodes of an odd polygon you have to use the Node Tool > Select All > Drag approach which is, I agree, a PITA.

3 hours ago, Igull said:

On the rectangle on the PDF solution, that doesn't work, in principle, it looks like it is working, but on the final rotation, it is not snapping to the guide (afaics :-)  )

It isn't snapping to a guide, as there isn't a guide on the artboard, but it is snapping to horizontal, by holding shift to constrain the rotation.

See this example using the rectangle technique to align two nodes of an odd polygon to be horizontal…

And again I agree that this isn't as convenient as the 2 clicks you can perform in Illustrator, but it does work.

Perhaps this shouldn't be a question, but rather a feature request?

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Aammppaa said:

Perhaps this shouldn't be a question, but rather a feature request?

Or perhaps it is already in the pipeline, part of the improvements coming in v1.7? 

[Igull]

On 8/27/2018 at 12:31 AM, Aammppaa said:

Yes you are correct that to snap the nodes of an odd polygon you have to use the Node Tool > Select All > Drag approach which is, I agree, a PITA.

It isn't snapping to a guide, as there isn't a guide on the artboard, but it is snapping to horizontal, by holding shift to constrain the rotation.

See this example using the rectangle technique to align two nodes of an odd polygon to be horizontal…

 

Perhaps this shouldn't be a question, but rather a feature request?

 

I had to look at your GIF over and over to see how that worked - what I couldn't understand was how the rectangle could possibly be shift constrained to go to 90deg ! In any other app, if the rectangle starts at say 23 deg off the horizontal, then shift constraining rotation would take you to 68deg (assuming constraints are set at 45deg :-) ie, 45 deg from the starting position - which is what you want, not how AD does it by snapping to the perpinzontal and horpendicular :-))And you're right, this really needs to be a feature request and they need to fix that constraint 'feature' :-)

Cheers

Neil

[firstdefence]

@Igull It will snap to 90º whether you constrain the rotation as you initially rotate the rectangle or move it first and then constrain it. To get the rectangle to snap to the nodes press Ctrl on Mac just after you draw out the rectangle.

[Igull]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

@Igull It will snap to 90º whether you constrain the rotation as you initially rotate the rectangle or move it first and then constrain it. To get the rectangle to snap to the nodes press Ctrl on Mac as you draw out the rectangle.

@firstdefenceHi, yes, I understand that we can snap the rectangle to the poly nodes, the issue is rotation constraint operation - normal mode is to constrain to the currently selected angle - whatever that might be, not to the cartesian position. So, if your rotated rectangle is currently at 27deg, it WONT (shouldn't :-) constrain to an orthogonal position, only to currentAngle+ (or -) constraintAngle ??? it should never get to an orthogonal position. You can try this in say AI/inkscape/ or just about any other graphics/CAD application - that's the way it will work.

I'm not saying that they are all right and AD is wrong, but how do you then shift 45 deg say from your current position ???? (without a modification popup panel).

Not unless you add ANOTHER modifier on top - say cmd+shift - if that were implemented - that would allow that mobility.

It's a useful 'feature', perhaps it would have been better implemented as 'normal' tho' (as if any of us are normal LOL :-))

Cheers

Neil

[firstdefence]

Rotational constraints are set at 15º at the moment and custom rotational options cannot be added yet, if an object is at say 38.8º upon pressing the shift key it will jump to 45, and increment in 15º increments to 60, 75 and 90 etc. 

You can just add 45º in the Transform Panels R: input field so if the R: field says 38.8º just click to the right of the º and type - or +45 and press enter it will then honour that addition or subtraction.

[Igull]

7 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Rotational constraints are set at 15º at the moment and custom rotational options cannot be added yet, if an object is at say 38.8º upon pressing the shift key it will jump to 45,

Yes, but my whole point is that it shouldn't :-))) If you want custom values, then simply typing in the transform panel would suffice for now in lieu of a custom panel, this is not the 'norm' - that's why I couldn't understand how it was 'working' - I do now tho' - I think "someone" once said that 'it's good to be different' :-)

It's a bit like moving the clutch to the brake position - they'll still do their same job, but we've moved them (maybe not, that's probably a tad extreme, but you get my drift :-)

It's not as if I haven't been doing it this way (wrongly?) since 1984 :-))

[firstdefence]

I've met some drivers that must have those cars on the slowterway today one tried to take my right wing off this morning, fortunately my spider senses were tingling and I'd pre-empted his idiocy lol!

Yes it can be a bind when you are so used to working in a particular way and expecting something to work in a particular way. It will get better but as always its never fast enough.

[Aammppaa]

Want to rotate an object at 38.8deg by 15/30/45/60deg?

Click 'Reset Selection Box' on context toolbar, and rotate away.

Affinity has the best of both worlds

[gdenby]

1 hour ago, Aammppaa said:

Want to rotate an object at 38.8deg by 15/30/45/60deg?

Click 'Reset Selection Box' on context toolbar, and rotate away.

 

Just so.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

Want to rotate an object at 38.8deg by 15/30/45/60deg?

Click 'Reset Selection Box' on context toolbar, and rotate away.

Maybe also worth mentioning, with or without resetting the selection box, you can choose the rotation anchor point in the Transform panel & use the "R:" slider, scrub left or right on the "R:" label , or enter a precise value in the "R:" field to rotate about that point. If you are using a mouse or other device with a scroll wheel or the equivalent, you can also position the pointer over the "R:" field & use the scroll wheel to change the value in fixed 1° steps, or 1/10° or 10° steps if used with modifier keys.

You can also do this with a rotation center other than any of the 9 anchor points, set to any point on or off the canvas you want. You can even use expressions to enter precise rotation values that can't be entered numerically because they are irrational, like 360/11, perfect for when you want to power duplicate to get 11 objects perfectly spaced around a center point.

None of this requires an extra panel.

[Igull]

12 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

Affinity has the best of both worlds 

 

LOL, except for snapping while rotating  

All of the above offer truly accurate rotation, but not the precision of snapping to previously drawn parts that I require.

At least I gained a few nice things from this post - every day is a  earning day some say - thanks all that provided the info, it's appreciated 

Talking of cars, I see they are changing to driving on the right hand side of the road here in Scotland - probably something to do with brexit, it's to be done over the whole of next weekend. On Saturday after 1:00pm, all commercial and public transport will move over to the right, then on Sunday, all private cars and manually propelled vehicles will follow suit. Road signs will be removed and changed over the following weekend - if required. 

Cheers

Neil

[Peter van Westen]

So this is a pretty old thread, but I too am missing snapping during rotation.

Ideally I would like to be able to have the anchor points of the object you are rotating to snap to anything selected in the snapping settings.
But I would be happy with it snapping to just guides and at least the grid (which Illustrator can do).

Here is an example of what I want: Just have the bottom right corner snap to the guide (or grid) when rotating:

 

[lepr]

37 minutes ago, Peter van Westen said:

Here is an example of what I want: Just have the bottom right corner snap to the guide (or grid) when rotating

Welcome to the Affinity forums

Designer's Point Transform Tool (F key by default) will easily solve that problem for the example in your GIF. I don't know whether the Help for the tool will actually help you, but if you run into problems then post here again.

[Peter van Westen]

6 minutes ago, anon2 said:

Welcome to the Affinity forums

Designer's Point Transform Tool (F key by default) will easily solve that problem for the example in your GIF. I don't know whether the Help for the tool will actually help you, but if you run into problems then post here again.

Awesome! That is what I was looking for.
Note: Keep the command key pressed for it to only rotate.