Affinity Designer symbol synchronization

[abject39]

If I create a symbol out of a donut and turn off the syncing to adjust the degree of the ring to open it up to a pie shape, then turn the syncing back on, any hole size adjustments I do won't sync anymore. Please tell me this is just a bug and not another limitation? Referring you Affinity Designer on Windows. 

[firstdefence]

Editing a symbol while sync is off will effectively detach that symbol from its symbol collective but it's a kind of rogue detach, like only some of the wires have been cut, Personally I think the symbols need more work.

Try this... 

1. Create a Doughnut and create a symbol.
2. Drag 2 more symbols into the workspace.
3. Turn off Sync and edit the arc of one doughnut we'll call this doughnut "Dunk"
4. Turn Sync back on, now editing Dunk does nothing to the other 2 doughnuts, they are no longer affected by Dunk,
5. If you try to create another symbol from Dunk the first symbol will change to mimic Dunk, so now you have 2 symbols that look alike, these are in affect a symbol symbol. Now when you edit Dunk the original symbols will enact all changes you make in the symbol symbol.

You can totally detach a symbol by clicking on the Detach button then you can make another distinct symbol.

If that doesn't twist your melon then nothing will. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

Editing a symbol while sync is off will effectively detach that symbol from its symbol collective but it's a kind of rogue detach, like only some of the wires have been cut ...

Apparently, for any shape converted to a symbol, if you unsync it & change any of its shape attributes, it detaches all of its shape attributes (angles, hole radius, number of sides or points, etc.), not just the specific attribute changed.

So I guess you could say all the 'shape' wires have been cut?

[firstdefence]

I suppose, what makes me say most of the wires is when you try to create a symbol from from an apparently detached symbol and it changes the original to its state. It's like its still connected on some level.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

I suppose, what makes me say most of the wires is when you try to create a symbol from from an apparently detached symbol and it changes the original to its state.

I am not sure what you mean -- if you detach a symbol (rather than unsync some of its attributes) it is no longer a symbol, has no original other than itself, & is not the child of the symbol layer it was detached from.

[firstdefence]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what you mean -- if you detach a symbol (rather than unsync some of its attributes) it is no longer a symbol, has no original other than itself, & is not the child of the symbol layer it was detached from.

It retains the Symbol folder tag, I'll make a video later to show you, I'm just finishing off another video though.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, firstdefence said:

It retains the Symbol folder tag...

That does not happen on my Mac. When I select a symbol instance & click the Detach button, that instance is converted from a "(Symbol)" to a "(Group)" tag. Neither is there a red edge on the left side of the group object or its children in the Layers panel denoting it as a symbol instance.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

That does not happen on my Mac. When I select a symbol instance & click the Detach button, that instance is converted from a "(Symbol)" to a "(Group)" tag. Neither is there a red edge on the left side of the group object or its children in the Layers panel denoting it as a symbol instance.

That's how it works on Windows, too.

[abject39]

So basically another affinity designer limitation? Ugh. This is killing me. Every week there's something new. Is there no real illustrator competition?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, abject39 said:

So basically another affinity designer limitation?

What limitation do you mean?

[abject39]

46 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What limitation do you mean?

There's no way to sync the other shape attributes after you've unsync and edit any shape attributes. Basically I need to create several donuts that each have different arcs but I also need to be able to edit them all at once and there's no way to do that. There's not even a way to select them all and edit their shape because as soon as you select a two or more shapes you lose the option to edit their shape attributes. This is clearly yet another limitation. I'm an independent software developer. I'm going to continue up use designer for this project but there's just seems to be no way at all to continue to use this for serious GUI work. And that really sucks because it has strengths but the weaknesses are very crippling. 

[carl123]

On 23 September 2018 at 2:29 PM, abject39 said:

If I create a symbol out of a donut and turn off the syncing to adjust the degree of the ring to open it up to a pie shape, then turn the syncing back on, any hole size adjustments I do won't sync anymore. Please tell me this is just a bug and not another limitation? Referring you Affinity Designer on Windows.

Do not turn off syncing and turn your donut into a pie shape.

Use other shapes to mask it to turn it into the shape you want

Then you can still change the hole size adjustment etc on the original donut shape which will also change your other symbols

You may need to provide a graphical example of what you are trying to do, if the above is not how I have correctly interpreted your problem

[R C-R]

14 hours ago, abject39 said:

Basically I need to create several donuts that each have different arcs but I also need to be able to edit them all at once and there's no way to do that.

If they each have different angle values, how could you edit them all at once & avoid one set of angle values being applied to all the others?

[abject39]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

If they each have different angle values, how could you edit them all at once & avoid one set of angle values being applied to all the others?

I don't plan on adjusting the angles again. I just find it weird that all shape parameters stop syncing instead of the parameter that's actually different. 

[abject39]

10 hours ago, carl123 said:

Do not turn off syncing and turn your donut into a pie shape.

Use other shapes to mask it to turn it into the shape you want

Then you can still change the hole size adjustment etc on the original donut shape which will also change your other symbols

You may need to provide a graphical example of what you are trying to do, if the above is not how I have correctly interpreted your problem

This is probably the closest work around. Better but not optimum. I'll post what I'm doing a little later today.