Snaps whilst drawing in Affinity Designer

[Edward Goodwin]

I have to say that I find the snapping process quite difficult to understand in Affinity Designer. I understand that the purple outline tool can help if you have an enormous amount of objects on your art board. However, for me it's not intuitive.

Anyway, could someone explain to me if it's possible to get snaps working whilst drawing between points in the same object being drawn? For example, imagine drawing a chevron shape like this: > 

I might start with the top left node point with the pen tool and then drawn down and to the right to create the next node point. Then on to the final node (bottom left). Is it possible to get the third node to align automatically to the top point? Currently, I can't make that happen. Am I doing something wrong? Even better would be if, as I'm drawing, it could flag that the third node is equally spaced vertically from the middle node as the upper node is spaced. 

A different but related question:

Is it possible for snaps to pick up middle points/nodes in a drawn object? For example, imagine I've drawn an M (but where the middle node of the M does not go down all the way to the bottom - i.e. it's within the bounding box of the overall shape). If I now draw another shape, I can snap to points which lie on the outer bounding box. However, Affinity Designer won't pick up the inner node as a snapping point. Am I doing something wrong?

All thoughts/suggestions gratefully received!

Edward

[Aammppaa]

Chevron Example: There are further snapping options on the context toolbar for the pen tool which do what you are asking.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Tools/tools_pen.html

Your second point…

1.7 Beta has significant improvements with snapping nodes in single objects and also multiple objects.

There is a whole new tool - the point transform tool which does exactly what you ask (middle node of the M).

Also alignment handles that operate on nodes / objects.

You can try out the customer beta of 1.7 to start using the new features today, but see the caveats in the download thread regarding stability, file format etc. That said, I have been using the beta daily for many months now.

[Edward Goodwin]

Thanks Aammppaa - that's really useful stuff. As I'm using Affinity Designer and Photo for work, I might wait until the beta is released...

Whilst I'm here, I have one further question:

In the pen tool, I see I can set the corner styles from chamfer to round to sharp. However, when the angle between straight lines is acute (less than 90degrees) the corner style shows as chamfered even when sharp corner is selected. Am I missing something?

Edward

[gdenby]

Hi, Edward Goodwin,

"If I now draw another shape, I can snap to points which lie on the outer bounding box. However, Affinity Designer won't pick up the inner node as a snapping point. Am I doing something wrong?"

This snapping option should give you what you want.

Snap to object geometry—when checked, objects can be snapped to object vertices and not simply to the bounding box or key points. Vertices are object corners or intersections, such as the points of a star, within a shape's bounding box.

Also, when I use the pen, I will get red or green highlite lines whenever the the pen tip is in alignment w. other nodes within the object. Likewise when moving nodes w. the node tool. I'm perplexed if you are not seeing the same.

As Aammppaa mentions, the 1.7 beta has some significant improvements for snapping nodes. I haven't used the beta a lot, and am still working thru the enhancements, but so far, have been able to easily do shape transforms.

[Edward Goodwin]

Hi Gdenby,

Interesting that you say that the Snap to Object Geometry should work - for me, it'll only snap to bounding box.

Perhaps I should be clearer though (sorry!) - when I say I want to snap to the points/nodes, I don't mean snap to the actual nodes, I mean snap to horizontal/vertical alignment of those nodes... Sorry for not having been clearer. In this instance, the vertical/horizontal alignment will only work for the object bounding box and not inner features...

Edward

[gdenby]

13 minutes ago, Edward Goodwin said:

Hi Gdenby,

Interesting that you say that the Snap to Object Geometry should work - for me, it'll only snap to bounding box.

Perhaps I should be clearer though (sorry!) - when I say I want to snap to the points/nodes, I don't mean snap to the actual nodes, I mean snap to horizontal/vertical alignment of those nodes... Sorry for not having been clearer. In this instance, the vertical/horizontal alignment will only work for the object bounding box and not inner features...

Edward

Ah, that does clarify. There is a somewhat clumsy way to do that. If you have shapes that are curves, not the built in parametric objects, select one, change to node mode, and select all. Using one of the nodes, move the shape to a desired node on the other shape. A yellow high light color will appear when the two are at the same position. Then, holding shift, on can constrain the object being moved to the vertical or horizontal position of the just touched point.

If necessary, one can create guide sets that intersect the nodes of a particular object. Not "auto-magic" by any means, but will allow exact positioning.

[Edward Goodwin]

Thanks Gdenby

 

Do you by any chance have any thoughts on this though:

In the pen tool, I see I can set the corner styles from chamfer to round to sharp. However, when the angle between straight lines is acute (less than 90degrees) the corner style shows as chamfered even when sharp corner is selected. Am I missing something?

(Perhaps someone already answered it by then I didn't follow the answer...)

Edward

 

[gdenby]

Edward,

In the pen tool, one may draw in 4 different modes, and change the node type as they are placed. Are you calling "chamfered" what in Affinity is a "smart" node, a bezier best fit? While the vectors between smart nodes may form an angle less than 90, there is usually a small curve to the path.

I usually refer to the corner tool styles as "chamfers." when a node is selected w. the corner tool, the default is no chamfer, and one must then select the type of chamfer to apply the tool. 

I'm supposing as so often happens that there is some problem w. terminology. It often helps to post a screen cap image along w. the text description. 

[Aammppaa]

3 hours ago, Edward Goodwin said:

the angle between straight lines is acute (less than 90degrees) the corner style shows as chamfered even when sharp corner is selected.

Increase the value in the Mitre box (default 1.5) until you get a sharp corner.

See https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/Panels/strokePanel.html for more details.

• Mitre—Sets the length of the extension of Mitre joins to create either sharp or flat corners.