Affinity Designer 1.7.0 - any way to keep gaps between objects?

[lesz3u]

Hi,

is there any way to keep distance between two or more objects, when I am transforming them? It would be very usable in UI design.

Im talking about situation, when i have fixed width container and want to put in it 4 elements with 30px gap between them. Now, when i want to transform that group of 4 elements, they change width, but margin between them will keep that 30px.

To be clear - i don't talk about auto distribute feature - i know about it, but it affects gaps width only, not objects themselfs.

[firstdefence]

Have you tried the Transform separately option 

[lesz3u]

15 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Have you tried the Transform separately option 

Thank you for response. Unfortunatly it doesn't solve my problem. Checking that option doesn't make objects keeps fixed margins between them.

I don't know if i can clearly express my mind in english, sorry for that. Imagine that Affinity works like CSS:

1. Set 1200px flex container.
2. Put in it 5 objects without fixed width. They fill all the space.
3. Now you add 30px margins between objects. The container remains the same - only objects change their widths.
4. If i want to change container width, it affects only children objects. Margins - like in css - keeps fixed 30px.

I hope the image will show what i want to ask for:

[GarryP]

Is this the sort of thing you are after?
It’s all done with Constraints (View → Studio → Constraints) but it can be a bit tricky to get right, just needs some experimentation.

Edit: This isn't a good way of doing this, as explained in later posts. Probably best not to use this technique for this purpose.

columns-same-width.afdesign

[lesz3u]

Thank you - that's sorts of idea! Unluckly that solution have one flaw - images loose their aspect ratio and it doesn't work for all time. But i will keep it in mind!

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.
Yeah, shame about the images losing their shape – more evident as they get smaller.
I don’t know why that happens. I’ve played around with it more but can’t get it to do exactly what you want.
More experimentation needed I think (or an explanation from someone).

[GarryP]

The images are actually keeping their aspect ratios but what’s happening is the ‘spacers’ I used are being drawn over them. See attached GIF where the pink ‘spacers’ overlap the images.
I guess this is because the images are scaling proportionally but the ‘spacers’ are not. And there’s got to be an overlap doing things this way as the images are being scaled in relation to the outer layer rather than the area between the ‘spacers’ because there’s no relationship between the images and the ‘spacers’.
I’ve experimented quite a bit but I can’t figure out a way of doing this properly yet. Maybe someone else can.

[lesz3u]

4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I guess this is because the images are scaling proportionally but the ‘spacers’ are not. And there’s got to be an overlap doing things this way as the images are being scaled in relation to the outer layer rather than the area between the ‘spacers’ because there’s no relationship between the images and the ‘spacers’.

That's the point - from beggining i was talking about that relationship between images and gaps. It would be extremely useful for design interfaces, but I guess, that there is no real solution at the moment (without experiments ;)).

 

Anyway - thank you for looking at my problem - that's great

[GarryP]

You’re welcome. I’m just a bit disappointed that I couldn’t come up with something that works. Maybe something will pop into my head later.

[Aammppaa]

Is this correct?

 

Affinity Constraints Example.afdesign

[GarryP]

If lesz3u doesn’t mind the height of the items changing then that looks like it works.
I was looking for a way of doing it without the height change but if that’s not necessary then maybe this will do the job.