Guides

[jackamus]

It would seem that starting this 'Guides' thread that I may have opened a can of worms for the developers!
There have been many suggestions about improving the versatility/usability of the current guide feature. I have basically copied and pasted all the suggestions into this one combined suggestion.

From jackamus
It would be useful to be able to set some locked guides (a different colour perhaps) whilst being able to use movable guides as well. Attached is a  file for having 4 different types of guide lines Guid lines.afdesign
The colour of the guides would be a default colour as well as a a user choice.
One of the suggestions I made some time ago was to be able to see an objects handles/nodes when moving a guide. I'm still waiting for that one.

From Aammppaa
The colour coding might be nice. 
A Guide layer.
Allow the user to export / print with guides visible.

Form CLCI
I also got a suggestion for guides. When you use Guide Manager and click the guide's coordinates, be it horizontal or vertical one, the guide itself should get highligted (maybe change color) so you know what guide you're working with.
Also, multiple guide selection in Guides Manager pane would be huge improvement.

From Nicky G
I also find the use of this panel for guides to be nice, but uncomfortable.
1. As you say you should highlight the guide in focus with different color
2. selection and movement of several guides (as if they were grouped)
3. Creating Guides rotated at user-defined angles
4. creation of vector shapes (any form) in guide, as happens in Ai.
5. possibility to open the guide panel by double clicking on the guide itself. (it would avoid the GUIDE DISPLAY / MANAGEMENT step)
6. Possibility of selecting and direct highlighting of the guide on the drawing table and moving the guide ALSO through the XY axes inside the panel visible on the screen Transform.
It would speed up the numerical displacement of a guide (as happens in Ai). I
In my opinion it would also be useful, by pressing at the same time as dragging the guides, for example CTRL, to activate a SNAP of the guide on the numerical notches of the ruler,
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7- 8 mm.
And depending on the Zoom, it is possible to hook the guides to intermediate sizes 0.5mm - 1mm - 1.5mm - 2mm - 2.5mm ....
Higher zoom even with 1/10 mm notches etc ...
1.1mm - 1.2 - 1.3 ....
Dragging without the CTRL key the operation remains the same as now.

From catlover

My only remaining beefs about the guides are these two:
1. they should extend all the way to the rulers
2. the user should be able to choose the color
Other than that, the devs did a cracking job with the guides.

 

 

 

 

 

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, jackamus said:

I have basically copied and pasted all the suggestions into this one combined suggestion.

It would be better to insert links to the original threads, where it is possible to see the discussions about the suggestion.

[AndyQ]

I'd like to get the guides display out of the rulers....I've got so many guidelines I can't see the goddamn ruler markings. At least make it an option if other people find that useful. 

[jackamus]

If you use that many guides that it is difficult to read the rulers then I suppose ots a good suggestion. However I would suggest that whilst the guide is moving it's position can be observed on the ruler.

[AndyQ]

21 hours ago, jackamus said:

If you use that many guides that it is difficult to read the rulers then I suppose ots a good suggestion. However I would suggest that whilst the guide is moving it's position can be observed on the ruler.

Without a snapping to a grid system that matches the ruler measurements you're not going to be able to place guides accurately just by looking at the rulers, so it seems a bit pointless (unless you're the kind of person who's happy with "almost perfect"). I'm doing UI layouts so I'm drilling down to tiny details and elements need to be exactly the same dimensions, so I use a fine grid then put LOTS of guides around the place to make larger divisions. As yet I've only tested with Affinity and am still using Adobe products for commercial work. 

As you've already noted, not being able to select multiple guides and manipulate them at once is a BIG omission. To be fair to the loathed Adobe, they've done a pretty good job in designing their guidelines system. You should be able to have guides "off-page", they should behave as per other objects and have their positions reported and editable via the transform palette. You should be able to perform relative movements of guides numerically (e.g. select a group of guides and nudge them 10mm to the left). You should be able to select guides with objects and move them together. At the very least I'd like to see a button that could be added to the toolbar to open the guides manager, and for multiple selections/deletions/moves be catered for there. Grids and guides are more important to me than any fancy brush tools, special effects or pretty pattern fills... 

cheers!

 

[Hywel Harris]

Guidelines are one of the reasons I haven't transitioned from CorelDraw yet (that and clones). The old (v2018 and prior) Guidelines Setup dialog is super fast at adding new guidelines and when you use a lot like I do for laying out precision drawings, this is a must. Corel have lost their way and are failing to keep up with the opposition so I'm keen to see whats developing in other applications. I put a list of desired new functionality to Corel years ago, but its just been ignored. FWIW these are a few of them

1. Grouping of guidelines to allow easy visibility/hidden toggling
2. Directly blend two guidelines to create equal divisions
3. Naming of guidelines and/or groups
4. Multiple guides layers

Of course CorelDraw is already quite good at guideline handling allowing easy selection of multiple guides, then dragging and duplicating, distributing, locking and hiding, however it sometimes isn't very good at having objects and nodes snap to guidelines and I have to zoom in or swap to wireframe view to check. Double clicking a guideline would immediately take you to the Guidelines Setup dialog to edit its position.

Attached is an example of why guidelines are important to me. A stained glass panel layout drawing

 

[AndyQ]

2 hours ago, Hywel Harris said:

Guidelines are one of the reasons I haven't transitioned from CorelDraw yet (that and clones).

Corel has a lot of good features (they way curves retain their shape after deleting nodes is still the best solution in the industry) but they're becoming an A-Hole company. Corel also don't make it easy for Adobe users to transition or co-use their software; it's fine having unique or better tools but you've got to try and make general navigation (panning, zooming etc.) easily compatible, which is where Affinity have made the right decision as I can swap between programs and retain all of those "muscle-memory" operations. Improved guidelines is certainly an area Affinity could look at for first matching then beating Adobe/Corel.  Illustrator has a much better guidelines system than Photoshop, but I'd like to have a setting for guides to be added only to a specified "guides layer" as I'm always accidently adding guides to the current working layer when I don't intend to. Guides on layers is a good thing, but  it'd be nice to have some options (e.g. a pull down menu to select either a constant target layer or "currently selected layer"). Cheers!

[Hywel Harris]

I've just downloaded the latest trial version and given it a run out. Not ready for work yet.

1. Giudelines need to be visible on the whole drawing area.
2. Need to be able to select, move and delete multiple guides
3. Adding and editing new guidelines needs to be much much quicker,
4. Line styles for guidelines, dashed or dotted is better than solid
5. Must be able to duplicate whilst dragging
6. Angled guides a must.

Will revisit on the next major update.

[jackamus]

Excellent! Just what I and others have been saying for some time now.

However what do you mean by 'Will revisit on the next major update.'?

[Hywel Harris]

38 minutes ago, jackamus said:

However what do you mean by 'Will revisit on the next major update.'?

I haven't purchased AD yet, I keep trying the trial hoping to find it more capable. As it stands the limitations with v1.7 are too serious for me to contemplate a transition from CorelDraw. TBH I could work more effectively in CorelDrawX5 (ca. 2010) . Object handling has always been one of CorelDraws' strengths (the things you can do with just the mouse and a few modifier keys) AD isn't very efficient in that department. But the lack of decent guideline tools would prevent me getting work done.  I'd love to beta test AD, but in order to do that effectively you have to be able to do real work with the application. So I will download the next version trial and test again. At some point it will become viable and then Corel had better watch out, the debacle with the 2019 release has pissed a lot of loyal users off. And their record of legacy bug fixing is diabolical.