panjakrejn Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 There was a feature in SketchUp that was very useful that you could clone a shape, and then when you edited any of the shapes you edited all of them. Is there a way to do this in Affinity Designer? Example: I create a straight line as a component. I then clone it three times and make a square. Now as I change the shape on one side of the square, the other three sides copy the edits live as I make them. Can we do that in AD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchshader Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 In designer you can use the symbols function for this Quote intel core i5, 16GB 128Gb ssd win10 Pro Huion new 1060plus. philips 272p 2560x1440px on intel HD2500 onboard graphics Razer Tartarus Chroma Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hywel Harris Posted May 27, 2021 Share Posted May 27, 2021 Symbols and Clones are different animals. Thats why CorelDraw has both and they work differently. I look forward to seeing clones in AD since I cannot transition from CorelDraw until they are available. (That and guideline handling) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loukash Posted May 27, 2021 Share Posted May 27, 2021 5 hours ago, Hywel Harris said: Symbols and Clones are different animals I don't know Corel's "clones", but you can expand Designer's symbols by utilizing the Links panel in Photo where you can unlink various object attributes and parameters. That works with symbols as well, as the underlying technology is obviously the same. So you can have symbols that will share only the shape and position, but can have completely unique fills, strokes, effects, you name it. It's a very modular system, so the possibilities are very broad. Just experiment… Some example screencasts I made for other threads recently: ade_group_outline_linked_fun.mp4 ade_aph_apu_linked_symbols.mp4 Quote MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hywel Harris Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 I did have a play with symbols in Designer and whilst I can get them to work as I wish, sometimes the clones become detached and won't update. Not sure why but the whole thing does feel a bit buggy. I went looking for a links panel to achieve the above but can't find one in Designer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loukash Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 18 minutes ago, Hywel Harris said: I went looking for a links panel to achieve the above but can't find one in Designer. There is actually none. But as a "happy accident" it is possible to activate it via the Layers panel when adding a crop mask object to a symbol content object. Works on Mac, but don't know if it also works on Wndows. Watch out for the "chain" icon in the Layers panel, then click it to open the Links panel, then save as a new Studio Preset to keep it active. 34 minutes ago, Hywel Harris said: Not sure why but the whole thing does feel a bit buggy. The relationship between linked/synced objects can become quite complex because of all the flexibility. And when there's complexity, there will be bugs… It is e.g. possible to create "infinite symbol loops" that will definitely crash the app. So while you can create some really weird and fun stuff with Symbols and Linked Layers, proceed with caution and test any "crazy" concepts on a dummy document first. Possibly that could also be the reason why Serif didn't want to mix the Symbols and the Linked Layers features (yet) although it appears to be based on the same technology. Often it's better to keep complex features limited in their scope first, until their worst bugs are identified and fixed. Quote MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithferion Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 On 5/27/2021 at 5:07 AM, Hywel Harris said: Symbols and Clones are different animals. Thats why CorelDraw has both and they work differently. I look forward to seeing clones in AD since I cannot transition from CorelDraw until they are available. (That and guideline handling) It'd be nice of you to include an example (I suppose you can find many in YouTube or any other site) to have a better understanding of the proposed feature. Best regards! Quote Windows 10 and Windows 11 :: http://mithferion.deviantart.com/ Oxygen Icons :: GCP Icons :: iOS 11 Design Resources :: iOS App Icon Template :: Free Quality Fonts (Commercial Use) :: Public Domain Images How to do High Quality Art :: Mesh Warp / Distort Tool Considerations :: Select Same / Object - Suggestions :: Live Glassmorphism Effect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 28 minutes ago, Mithferion said: It'd be nice of you to include an example (I suppose you can find many in YouTube or any other site) to have a better understanding of the proposed feature. Best regards! Mithferion 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithferion Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 So, the Symbol Tool is better than the Clone Tool in CorelDRAW in some cases... Best regards! Quote Windows 10 and Windows 11 :: http://mithferion.deviantart.com/ Oxygen Icons :: GCP Icons :: iOS 11 Design Resources :: iOS App Icon Template :: Free Quality Fonts (Commercial Use) :: Public Domain Images How to do High Quality Art :: Mesh Warp / Distort Tool Considerations :: Select Same / Object - Suggestions :: Live Glassmorphism Effect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 Thanks, @firstdefence , but that video talks almost exclusively about using symbols, and never says what cloning does (except that it sometimes has problems). Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loukash Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 The "cloning" in the video linked by @firstdefence looks to me like power-duplicating a symbol in Designer. So, stuff like that can be replicated in Designer. The "hard part" is the lack of the Shape Fill tool. But else, we can do quite crazy stuff with symbols. Although frankly, the following is not possible (as far as I can tell by now) without a little help from Photo's Links panel to relink the odd set of objects so that they have unlinked fills from the even objects but remain linked as a shape. It may need some trickery and understanding for the limits of both the Symbols as well as the Links panel options; not everything is obvious upfront and requires a bit of a "trial and error" procedure to make it work. But when it finally works, it's fun: ade_cloned_symbols.mp4 ^ What still needs to be solved here is that the leaf at the top of the stack – logically – isn't being obscured by the leaf at the bottom of the stack that lies next to it on canvas. I have an idea using a partially linked clipping shape of the bottom leaf to work around that but haven't tested it yet. Quote MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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