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How to create watch dial with number align vertically?


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Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @fredlim. :)

On a watch dial or clock face, only the 9 and 3 are aligned vertically. The 12 and 6 are aligned horizontally and the other pairs are rotated to regular positions in between.

Create the 12 and 6 as centred text at the desired distance apart, align them horizontally, group them and press Ctrl+J to duplicate the group. Keeping the duplicate group selected, Shift-drag on one of the ends to rotate it by 30°, and then press Ctrl+J four more times to create the other eight numbers. At this stage you’ll have six 12s and six 6s, all rotated except for the original pair, so to finish off you’ll need to unrotate the copies and replace the numerals.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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TickTock.afdesign Saved with history so you can jog back and forth in the history panel. 

1600381221_ScreenShot2019-01-09at08_24_04.png.d27d4b5c29253196d2db334033c677f8.png

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/9/2019 at 2:57 AM, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @fredlim. :)

On a watch dial or clock face, only the 9 and 3 are aligned vertically. The 12 and 6 are aligned horizontally and the other pairs are rotated to regular positions in between.

Create the 12 and 6 as centred text at the desired distance apart, align them horizontally, group them and press Ctrl+J to duplicate the group. Keeping the duplicate group selected, Shift-drag on one of the ends to rotate it by 30°, and then press Ctrl+J four more times to create the other eight numbers. At this stage you’ll have six 12s and six 6s, all rotated except for the original pair, so to finish off you’ll need to unrotate the copies and replace the numerals.

Similar question: instead of numerals, what about objects, like rectangular hour and minute markers?

Do I really need to press control+J 60 times if I want to get minute markers? Is there an easier way?

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7 hours ago, nobodysawme said:

Similar question: instead of numerals, what about objects, like rectangular hour and minute markers?

Do I really need to press control+J 60 times if I want to get minute markers? Is there an easier way?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @nobodysawme. :) (BTW, it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that I saw you!)

For minute markers, use the Cog Tool to create a gear wheel with 60 teeth. Adjust the parameters so that the teeth are separate thin rectangles.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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10 hours ago, nobodysawme said:

Do I really need to press control+J 60 times if I want to get minute markers? Is there an easier way?

If you want a more complex marker than you can get using the cog tool, you can reduce the number of power duplicates needed by duplicating the first marker, rotating it 90° around the center of the clock face after setting 'show rotation center' of the marker to the center of the clock face. Do that twice more, select all 4 markers, duplicate them, & rotate that set of 4 by one 'tick' (6°) & power duplicate to get the rest of the markers.

If you are using Affinity Designer, you can make the first marker a symbol so if you want to change the design of the markers, you just have to change one of them & all the others will automatically change at the same time. That's what I did in this clockface markers .afdesign file. It has the history included so you can use the history slider to see how I made it.

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  • 3 years later...

 I see this is an old thread but Im getting desperate to find an answer. 

How would you get the second hashes to follow a rectangular path? I've been using the rectangle tool across the screen and doing the duplicate around the. center radius then cropping the inside with a second inside rectangle. How can you do this, or can you make individual hashes follow a shape that's not round ?

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For the square second (or minute) hashes AND to keep them single curves (for whatever reason). Or if the masked version's (which is a great way to go) sharp/angled cutoffs aren't what you're after....

You could:

• Draw Cog with 30 teeth, 50% Tooth & Notch sizes. In order for the 12:00/6:00 positions to be vertical and the 3/9 to be horizontal give it a 3º rotation
• Make a "squared" donut (same as @anto's), but this time use it for a Boolean Intersect with the Cog
• Separate the pieces (this step isn't 100% needed, but by trial and error this really helps to get a clean result in the next step)
• Select all nodes and Break
• Select all the short connector bits and delete.
   (I did it in two stages, inner and outer, but maybe you can pull it off in one..... all depends on your familiarity with the selection tools and hot keys)

whole thing takes about a minute.... I'm moving kinda fast. Feel free to slow down the vid or step through the frames if needed. Cheers

 

 

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18 hours ago, JimmyJack said:

• Select all the short connector bits and delete. I did it in two stages, inner and outer, but maybe you can pull it off in one.....

I must be missing something but when I try to duplicate all the steps in your video, at about 0:51 when you select (all?) the short inner connector bits with the Move Tool & it shows as 32 objects selected, when I try the same thing it selects 92 objects (everything except the outer short connector bits) so when I delete them the only thing left is the outer ones.

Where I am at now, just before trying to select any of the curves, is shown in this 124 objects.afdesign file.

What am I doing wrong?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I must be missing something but when I try to duplicate all the steps in your video, at about 0:51 when you select (all?) the short inner connector bits with the Move Tool & it shows as 32 objects selected, when I try the same thing it selects 92 objects (everything except the outer short connector bits) so when I delete them the only thing left is the outer ones.

Where I am at now, just before trying to select any of the curves, is shown in this 124 objects.afdesign file.

What am I doing wrong?

Sounds like you've selected all the radii as well as the inner bits.

To just select the inner bits (probably many other ways to do this) after you first click with the mouse hold down the control key when dragging (mac).
This will temporarily disable the intersect objects to select setting (I assume that's your default in tools > prefs). When doing that, only things that are fully enclosed in the selection marquee will be selected, i.e. just the inner bits.

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1 hour ago, JimmyJack said:

To just select the inner bits (probably many other ways to do this) after you first click with the mouse hold down the control key when dragging (mac).

When I do that, the context menu pops up. Are you sure you don't mean some other key than the CTRL one?  

Ah. I figured it out. I had ⌃+Click show context menu enabled in Tools > Preferences. When I disable that, CTRL-dragging works like you said.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks for the reply's. I have tried the cog tool. When I use the 12 tooth option I need the first tooth to the right at 30*. I can only get that cog to project at 30* if I make the cog tool almost twice as large as my artboard. I'm sure this is just operator error somehow. If I was only needing a circular watch face that solution is quite easy. I'm also using an ipad. Max cog teeth is 48. I have been using a bit of a workaround by cropping using border windows. 

Again, your help was much appreciated.

 

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28 minutes ago, shonuff419 said:

When I use the 12 tooth option I need the first tooth to the right at 30*. I can only get that cog to project at 30* if I make the cog tool almost twice as large as my artboard.

i am not sure what you mean about getting the cog to "project." As for getting the cog rotated so the 12/6 positions will be vertical & the 3/9 ones to be horizontal, note that since there are 24 sides (2 each for the 12 teeth) & the tooth size is 50% then the rotation should be 7.5° (360/24*2).

For example 12 tooth at 7.5°.afdesign is a 510px cog rotated 7.5° on a 600 px square artboard.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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