Questions about vector tools

[V Silly]

Hello folks,

Long time illustrator user and trying to figure out how to use the pen tool and other drawing tools in affinity designer. Couple of questions from my last attempt at drawing some simple shapes.

1–how do I use the reflect tool to make a copy from one side of the drawing to the other side of the drawing so that it becomes a symmetrical object? I was not able to figure out how to make the reflect tool copy. I had to copy, paste on top, reflect and then move into position. Whereas in illustrator I was able to make a copy with the chosen center point and it was all one simple step.

2 –I was not able to find a smooth tool. There were some slight bumps on my line art and I could not find the smooth tool or figure out how to fix the bump by editing the nodes. I was not able to find a way to drag a handle out of an existing point. I also was not able to find a way to join nodes.

Thanks in advance for your help, this forum is excellent. Best regards

[v_kyr]

1. With this template you can draw symmetrical figures in Affinity designer. This template use symbols.

2. Edit vector curves and shapes (see bottom of page)

[V Silly]

Here is an example below of an issue. I have 2 separate shapes and I would like to join the path where the two different nodes are selected. I have not been able to figure out how to make the 2 paths join.

[v_kyr]

See:

• How to join lines to create shapes in Affinity Designer (video)

• How to join paths?

[V Silly]

Thank you very much for the pointer

[V Silly]

That was helpful, my confusion came from choosing close curves instead of join curves.

So now I have joined the shapes, and I would like to remove the extra nodes which are selected in the screenshot below. In illustrator you would use the pen tool with the minus symbol to delete nodes from the path. How does this work in affinity designer? Thank you

[v_kyr]

In AD you usually select nodes with the node tool and hit the delete key. But you have to be careful when removing nodes here to not destroy paths where those nodes are belonging to and are needed for then.

[V Silly]

Yay so easy! Maybe I'll get the hang of this yet :-)

[casterle]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

But you have to be careful when removing nodes here to not destroy paths where those nodes are belonging to and are needed for then.

But if you do, Ctrl-Z (or whatever undo is on the Mac) to the rescue .

[lepr]

.

[V Silly]

Here's one more thing that's baffling me. I redrew the art board and I can't seem to get out of art board mode. It says the word art board in the upper left corner and even when I select other tools it still seems to be in art board mode.

???

[walt.farrell]

That is simply the name of the Artboard that you created. If you were to create another Artboard it would be named Artboard2, unless you rename it via the Layers panel.

[V Silly]

So if what I really wanted was to change the size of the page I need to do it in document setup? Is the art board feature for a multi page document?

Also is there a ruler tool to make measurements within the program? I have only found the eyedropper tool…

Thank you

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, V Silly said:

So if what I really wanted was to change the size of the page I need to do it in document setup?

It is a bit confusing but 'canvas mode' & 'artboard mode' (for lack of better terminology) are treated differently regarding sizes.

In 'canvas mode' there is only one canvas in the document, so to change its dimensions in Affinity Designer you use the File > Document Setup > Dimensions tab to do that.

In 'artboard mode' there are one or more artboards in the document, each with its own dimensions that can be adjusted just like adjusting the size of a layer (by selecting it & dragging its bounding box handles in the workspace or using the Transform panel). Because each artboard is independent of the others, in File > Document Setup > Dimensions tab the dimensions fields are grayed out -- there is no 'global' canvas size.

Also, in Affinity Designer artboards are not really the same as pages, except that multi-page PDF documents pages are imported as individual artboards & artboards are exported to PDF as pages, determined by their stacking order in the Layers panel, not by name or position in the workspace.

It may (or may not!) help to think of it in terms of a container hierarchy. An Affinity document can have one of two container hierarchies, either with a single 'global' container (the canvas) or with a multiple container hierarchy, each with its own properties.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, V Silly said:

Also is there a ruler tool to make measurements within the program?

You can show a ruler (View > Show Ruler), which may be part of what you want. There's no ruler tool, but Designer will show you the distance between a selected object and something your cursor is over. For more information, see the Help.

[V Silly]

I've almost got it but I'm a bit confused. I got the measurement to display, but then the next time it would not work. Do I need to have a particular tool selected in order for this to work? Do I need to select entire object or just part of the object? I was trying to measure the distance between two endpoints. One time I did it I got square boxes that lined up and showed me the measurement I was looking till four. Just tried it again with the same file and now I am not getting any measurements to show using the command key same as before ... thanks very much for the tips it's really helpful