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[AD 1.7] Distribute and space not working properly


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Can anyone explain why when I select all the vertical black slats and do either a Layer > Alignment > Distribute Vertically or Space Vertically they come out like this?  For extra credit, how can I get AD 1.7 to properly align them?  Test5.afdesign

1913940635_ScreenShot2019-06-16at11_43_33AM.png.645de366674d638e60665cd62c304afa.png

I want them in a straight angled line (not a horizontal line) between the position of the first and last units.  The items are all identical copies of each.  They were made with a Power Duplicate almost in the correct locations and I just wanted to get them perfectly spaced.

I appreciate any help on understanding this.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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This is Bricked.

Bad bug for the vertical distribution.

I had no luck with your document and weirder results for the one I hand rolled.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Bruce, thanks for trying.  Makes me wonder...  I guess I'll do it manually.  Maybe someone else will have an idea.  What's interesting is that it did almost a perfect opposite what it was supposed to do.  Like it had reversed the location of the first and last slat.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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Do it in 2 steps

Select all Slats then...

First:

Align Vertically & Align Middle button then click OK (important!)

Second:

Align Vertically & Space Vertically button, untick Auto Distribute and enter -494px then click OK


(then just drag vertically down and centre all slats on the black line)

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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2 hours ago, carl123 said:

Do it in 2 steps

Maybe I misunderstood how to do one of the steps, but this did not work on my Mac running Affinity Designer 1.7.0. Weirdly, what did was to do it in four steps, the last 2 repeating the first 2. Attached with save history enabled are Test6.afdesign (the 2 step version of Test5) & Test7.afdesign (the 4 step version).

Maybe stepping through the history of each one will offer a clue about either what I did wrong or some bug in the Mac version ... or something?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I have attached my file with history showing the 2 steps

See if that looks/works OK on a Mac

Interestingly, if I open your Test7 file it initially looks Ok but if I simply scrub the history to the beginning and end again it then looks wrong and it's not a screen redraw issue - still there when viewed at 100%

(screenshot attached shown at 50% zoom, just so it fits the screen)

There may indeed be some differences how MACs and PCs do this 

 

 

 

Test5-2steps.afdesign

test7weird.jpg

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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33 minutes ago, carl123 said:

I have attached my file with history showing the 2 steps

See if that looks/works OK on a Mac

It does ... but if I move the history slider all the way back to the left & repeat those same 2 steps manually, I get this:

1404370112_alignweirdness.jpg.c6ec1594b206da0044827b8a86aeadac.jpg

Which is the same thing I get working with the original test5 file. O.o

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Yup, looks like there may be differences between MACs and PCs

If I download the same file I uploaded then moving the history slider back and forth does not alter my results. 

One for the Devs, I think.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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PixelPest, okay how are you doing this.  You are controlling it as though it was a character in a text path.  How did you make the slat into a character?  Wait so you just pasted it onto the text cursor.  Crazy it took it.  I had no idea that could be done!

The tilt/shear entry in the character panel doesn't do anything, how are you tilting the slats?  The baseline doesn't have any control either, but then I'm surprised anything works on this.  But how are you tilting them at the end of the gif.

I can see a lot of uses for this trick.  Wow!

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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Neat trick and I will try to remember it. But ... Always a but. The fact remains that there is something wrong with the vertical Distribute function not working.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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57 minutes ago, Gear maker said:

Wait so you just pasted it onto the text cursor.  Crazy it took it.  I had no idea that could be done!

Neither did I, but at least on my Mac it acts a little like a bug. For example, it seems odd that shear in the Character panel doesn't do anything & sometimes, depending on if & where I have clicked in the numeric tracking field & then clicked elsewhere, the tracking up/down buttons don't do anything.

I also sometimes got very weird results if I did not create a new path with the Pen Tool and (or maybe or?) did not adjust the green start triangle before pasting -- sometimes the expanded parent path text object showed the pasted item but they did not appear on the canvas at all, not even in Outline view mode or if assigned a fill or stroke color of their own.

Basically, my results were erratic, sometimes working like in the GIF & sometimes not. :/

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, PixelPest said:

It´s adjusted via Shearing:

Ah in the transform panel.  Do you know if this "function" of the text path has worked for quite awhile?  Still floored by this.  Thanks again for showing us it.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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8 hours ago, PixelPest said:

Sorry - this seems ridiculous complicated for simply spreading objects evenly along a given angle. 

AD would benefit from a proper interpolation tool like Inkscape has:

...

But in AD I´d go a totally different route by using the art-text tool:

...

Cheers

Huh? What do you mean? Are we using the same software? In Designer vertical distribution works fine too. Also with groups and masked objects. Just put some objects next to each other in designer, place the first high and e last one low and press distribute-vertical: no problem at all.

But for some reason something in the file of @Gear maker just seems to be a weird case scenario where something is off. I tried it with paths, groups and masked paths, but everything works here when creating from scratch. But when I load in the file of Gear maker that file is a disaster. Not sure how it got that way though.

Everything working fine here:

 

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Basically what the distribute tool appears to be doing here is to define the selection 'margin' as the distance between the smallest and largest y coordinates based on the selected elements (as expected), so the top of the 'highest' element (the green bar) and the bottom of the lowest element (the blue bar).

It is then distributing the remaining elements (excluding the highest and lowest elements) based on the order in which they are selected. You can achieve a different result/layout every time depending on the order in which you select the elements/layers.

Where the highest (or lowest) element in the selection (in this example, the green bar) appears 'in between' the other selected elements it is then substituting the first element/layer (the pink bar) in its hierarchy for that element in terms of where it positions it, so in the screen capture, the first element/layer (the pink bar) is taking the place of the green bar in terms of hierarchy based on the order in which the elements were originally selected because the green and blue bars are fixed positionally and you can't have two elements appearing with the same 'y' coordinate.

Clearly not how this is supposed to work but at least the apparent randomness is making a little more sense.

 

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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@Gear maker   I see the problem/bug here:     Alright, I was too soon. 

The first shape you have in each group is an OPEN shape. If you close it Affinity has no problem anymore distributing your groups vertically. Still this is obviously a bug in Designer, but to overcome this this moment you could close the shape of the first one, get rid of the other once, copy the first one again and distribution should work now.

open_shape.JPG.4aff61667456cd825e0f0197111278a5.JPG

 

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22 minutes ago, Hangman said:

It is then distributing the remaining elements (excluding the highest and lowest elements) based on the order in which they are selected. You can achieve a different result/layout every time depending on the order in which you select the elements/layers.

Alright, I see you're right... Damn... that's a nasty bug that should be so easy to solve... (and shouldn't be there in the first place...)

 

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6 minutes ago, Friksel said:

The first shape you have in each group is an OPEN shape. If you close it Affinity has no problem anymore distributing your groups vertically.

Friksel, I tried closing the first shape in every group.  Both Space and Distribute reacted no different for me than it had before.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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This perhaps shows it a little bit better. First selecting layers 20 through 10 in the first example followed by layers 10 through 20 in the second. The elements in each case are then distributed based on the order selection...

 

Affinity Designer 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1.2344 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1.2344
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 | Affinity Photo 1.7.3 | Affinity Publisher 1.10.8
MacBook Pro 16GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, Magic Mouse

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6 minutes ago, Gear maker said:

Friksel, I tried closing the first shape in every group.  Both Space and Distribute reacted no different for me than it had before.

Yes, I just notice the same, so I striped through my previous post, because I cannot delete stuff here. 

It's obviously a crazy bug in Designer that shouldn't be hard to solve, but needs to be solved.

In the meantime; why don't you just start a new file, start with the one on the left and copy all of them 'till the last one on the right; distribution then works fine.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, Hangman said:

This perhaps shows it a little bit better. First selecting layers 20 through 10 in the first example followed by layers 10 through 20 in the second. The elements in each case are then distributed based on the order selection...

order_selection.mov

You're absolutely right and your previous explanation was already pretty well said. That's exactly what I see happening here too.

Sitenote: Please upload MP4s... than we can view the videos on the website instead of needing to download them. (Free software like OBS let you record the screen directly to mp4 so you don't need to convert .mov or whatever format)

 

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I used PixelPerfect's method to get my drawing going.  Fabulous. 

I'm hoping the Dev's can figure out what is happening and cure whatever bug is causing the problem.  Seeing as the initial shapes were made in 1.7 with no conversion or import they should work.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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