Bounding Box Based Transforms

[JET_Affinity]

I am becoming increasingly concerned about what I consider the most debilitating aspect of Affinity Designer's drawing interface: Its dependency upon bounding boxes for all on-page transforms, especially rotations. This is downright amateurish in comparison to tools-based transforms.

The functionality depicted below is from Illustrator. The same thing can be done in Corel Draw. It's a procedure I use everyday, all-day. The exact use case could be anything. Be it a loosey-goosey cartoon, a portrait, a product label, a photo-realistic drawing of a motorcycle, or anything in between, the argument is valid for any kind of serious illustration work: In most cases, bounding box handles simply do not correspond to the details of interest when performing snap-sensing on-page transforms directly and intuitively with the mouse.

 

Related concerns:
Like Illustrator and all the other programs that copy-cat it, Affinity Designer has modeled its interface upon the despised, but now conventional wisdom, "necessity" for two separate and distinct primary selection tools. (Despised, that is, by me and many others who remember the functionally superior single selection tool of FreeHand.) But even accepting that as a battle lost, these concerns make matters even worse in Affinity:

• Selection: A path selected by the black pointer is selected as a whole; i.e., it is selected at the object level. Per conventional treatment, doubleClicking is the shortest shortcut to putting the path in "edit mode." So here's the issue:
  
  By what logic does doubleClicking the path to put it in "edit mode" effectively deselect all of its nodes? Of what use is that selection state? The program should not assume that I want to manipulate a sub-set of the nodes, especially given that I cannot even use the black pointer to drag a path by one of its nodes, as I can in other programs that let me turn off the infernal, visually cluttering, omnipresent bounding boxes.
  
  A selected path is selected as a whole. DoubleClicking it should therefore initially have all of its nodes selected, not none of them. That way, it is at least ready for the user to simply mousedown on a particular node to drag the whole path by that node, and snap it to any snapping candidate within pick distance.

 

• Pen Tool: Turn on Line Mode. Draw a diagonal path. Now tell me: What is the length of that path? At what angle was it drawn? With the bounding box failing the job, knowing that, I could at least use the Transform panel to rotate something else to that exact angle? But about that other object: How can I determine the present angle of the portion of it that I need to rotate so that I know how far to rotate it? Again, in Affinity, dimensional information about a selected path is limited to that of the mere bounding box, which is usually of no interest whatsoever when drawing as opposed to merely designing a page layout. Every serious drawing program needs to provide access to the length (along with other geometric information) of a path. Getting the exact angle of a single-segment straight path should not be limited to the orientation of its bounding box, just because it was initially drawn diagonally when a diagonal line is what was needed. Such omissions effectively nullify Affinity's other accuracy-based advantages. What good is it for me to be able to scale a path by the cosine of another path's angle, when I don't know and can't determine what that angle is? How can I determine how foreshortened a straight line is, when I can't measure its on-page length?
  
  In Illustrator, one can at least determine both the length and angle of any measure by quickly drawing a single segment path with the Line Tool, deleting it, and then clicking the page to invoke its modal dialog, which then displays the length and angle of the last-drawn "line." (The other LBO tools can be exploited similarly). Elegant? No, such measures should obviously be provided by its functionally lame Measure Tool. But at least the needed functionality is there. Yet another low-hanging fruit obvious example of opportunity to surpass Illustrator, rather than falling short of it.
  
  In Illustrator, one can at least open the Document Info palette, put it in Selection and Object mode, and see the length of a selected path, its number of nodes, whether it is open or closed, and more. Again: elegant? No. Low hanging fruit? You betcha.

 

• If we must have these omnipresent, cluttering bounding boxes, by what logic am I disallowed from permanently re-setting them? The program should not assume I am always and forever interested in transforming the object relative to the orientation of its bounding box as originally drawn. Imagine any arbitrarily-shaped path. An illustrator creates countless ones in the course of any style illustration. The final orientation of that path usually has nothing at all to do with its orientation to the page as it was originally drawn. What's important is its orientation to the rest of the drawing. I get really tired of having to "cycle" the selection box when I am no longer interested in the original orientation.
  
  Let me at least reset the bounding box to the current orientation to which I have purposely moved it, as I can do in competing drawing programs. Don't require me to forever temporarily reset the bounding box each and every time I want to use a bounding box based transform after the path was originally drawn.
  
  If you want to do something beyond what competing programs do, consider providing the ability to rotate the bounding box itself to change the orientation of its transforms without rotating its object.

 

• Clutter. A selection can already be rotated by no less than four bounding box handles (near its corners), all of which do the exact same thing. What is the need for the visual clutter of a fifth handle (the massive rotation lollypop)? I'm not doing precision illustration with my blunt finger tip. I'm working on the desktop, not on a cell phone. Provide a preference to turn off display of that kindergarten handle.

 

• As others have mentioned, by what logic does the rotation center button disappear when in "Transform Mode"? That's when I need it most.

 

• "Snap all selected nodes when dragging" seems to be a misnomer. It doesn't work in Transform Mode when rotating by dragging.

I'm sorry for the obvious frustration. Despite its other advantages, Affinity is sub-standard until this stuff is addressed. I understand and champion guarding interface elegance. But it seems that additional "mode" buttons (which annoyingly appear, disappear, and shift around when needed) are being added just to avoid adding what's really needed: Well-designed transform TOOLs in the toolbox.

JET

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

Let me at least reset the bounding box to the current orientation to which I have purposely moved it, as I can do in competing drawing programs. Don't require me to forever temporarily reset the bounding box each and every time I want to use a bounding box based transform after the path was originally drawn.

Even DrawPlus allows us to ‘Convert to Curves’ an object which is already a curve, thereby resetting its bounding box to the current orientation.

[Aammppaa]

Just responding to your first point (have not read the rest of your post yet)

The Point Transform Tool in 1.7 does everything you require…

In the GIF: I translate the shape, then set a custom rotation centre, then rotate and snap the node to the line. Finally I zoom each intersection to 16000% in outline mode to show that it worked.

Remember you can turn off snapping to bounding boxes if they are getting in your way. Ensure that you have snap to object geometry turned on.

The Point Transform Tool is new in the 1.7 beta. It has a default shortcut of F. By default it is nested under Node Tool in the Tools.

[Ben]

@JET_Affinity

As @Aammppaa says - I recently added the Point Transform Tool to handle exactly the situation you have illustrated above.  I did already tell you in private messages that I was working on that tool.  It should also give an advantage in that it will allow axonometric transformations, relative to the current grid plane.  It provides translation with snapping to a specific point, scaling between the focal point and any given point on a curve, and rotation of a point on the curve about a given point.  The transform centre point uses the same point assigned by the Custom Rotation Centre in the Move tool, but can easily be assigned to a point on the curve by clicking, or by dragging it to any location.

[JET_Affinity]

17 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

 It has a default shortcut of F. By default it is nested under Node Tool in the Tools.

Well, dang! That is encouraging. Thanks for that. I was able to invoke it with the shortcut you provided, but on neither my primary desktop machine nor my Surface Pro is anything nested with the Node Tool.

JET

 

[MEB]

Hi JET_Affinity,
You may need to reset the app to see the changes on the UI: press and hold CTRL while launching it until a Clear User Data dialog appears, keep the first three checkboxes ticked (only) and press the Clear button.

[JET_Affinity]

1 hour ago, Ben said:

I did already tell you in private messages that I was working on that tool.

Yes, I remember your mentioning that, and have been watching for it. But had figured it had slipped in priority, seeing nothing on it.

1 hour ago, Ben said:

 It should also give an advantage in that it will allow axonometric transformations, relative to the current grid plane.

I'll certainly be exploring that, now that I know it's there.

JET

[JET_Affinity]

3 minutes ago, MEB said:

You may need to reset the app to see the changes the UI: press and hold CTRL while launching it until a Clear User Data dialog appears, keep the first three checkboxes ticked (only) and press the Clear button.

Thanks, MEB. I'll give that a try next chance I get. I've just been running the installer with each Beta release, and leaving things as they are. I've assumed that results in a default configuration, since every time I have to turn off the dark interface.

JET