How to flip Ruler scale

[Parmanand]

How do i flip scale of ruler? I always wanted to move my ruler origin to bottom left side of the document. As we have this feature in AD, but I'm still unable to flip the ruler as it is stuck in the original ways.

what my ruler graph should look like

(X,Y) plain on top right

(-X,Y) plain on top left

(-X,-Y) plain on bottom left

(X,-Y) plain on bottom right

 

AD does have X-axis the right way, but i want to flip the Y-axis. as when i reset ruler origin to bottom left side of the document. the Y-axis appear to be flipped up. This will help me to create guide line easily. now i'm doing more calculation than designing.

 

 

 

[Aammppaa]

If I understand correctly, then I think your request can't be done at present - there is no way to flip the ruler.

1. The Grid origin seems to only affect the Grid, not Guides.

2. You can drag the intersection of the two rulers to move the spread origin, and it will snap to the bottom left corner (if you have the right snapping options enabled) but there seems to be a bug here…

• Once the spread origin is moved, guides dragged on the canvas show the correct offset in the tooltip, but the wrong offset (still measured from top left) in the Guide Manager.

• Also, it is disappointing that you can't use field expressions in the Guide Manager - for example I can't type sh - 60 to place a guide 60mm from the bottom of the spread, or sw / 7 to place a guide one 7th of the way across the spread.

[Dan C]

Hi Parmanand,

Welcome to the forums

Unfortunately there's no way to flip the rulers in Affinity currently, my apologies. I'll move this thread to feature requests and feedback for our devs to see and consider!

[Old Bruce]

On 6/27/2019 at 4:50 AM, Aammppaa said:

• Once the spread origin is moved, guides dragged on the canvas show the correct offset in the tooltip, but the wrong offset (still measured from top left) in the Guide Manager.

 

I think that is only if you have artboards. 

Also try using 100/7 when the Percent checkbox is ticked.

[Tirmuncq]

On 6/28/2019 at 1:33 PM, Dan C said:

Hi Parmanand,

Welcome to the forums

Unfortunately there's no way to flip the rulers in Affinity currently, my apologies. I'll move this thread to feature requests and feedback for our devs to see and consider!

MEANWHILE, 5 MONTHS LATER...

I just built a green-screen studio with 3 cameras at fixed positions. I want to use AF Designer (AFD) to create vector-drawn background scenes that replace green-screen in post. While they are the 'same' background, shot from 3 different camera angles, they nevertheless require 3 separate vector-drawn AFD backgrounds, as AFD doesn't currently handle perspective shift (perspective projection). My work-around has 5 cartesian transformations encoded into a Numbers spreadsheet:

-- a 3D translation from the studio origin to each camera location;

-- a 3D camera orientating z-axis rotation for each camera;

-- a 3D camera orientating y-axis rotation for each camera;

-- a 3D camera orientating x-axis rotation for each camera;

-- a 3D perspective projection to a chosen 2D image plane (my background drawing).

The spreadsheet allows me to enter 3D (x, y, z) coordinates for multiple points in world-space and read off their corresponding 2D coordinates, projected on an image plane (my drawing) at a chosen distance from each camera. In other words, I use the transformed 2D coordinates to reconstruct a common background scene from the angle and orientation of each camera. Q.E.D.

When I came to draw the backgrounds in AFD, I first translated the ruler origin to coincide with my chosen origin in the studio. Perfect! So far, so good. Imagine my dismay though, when I noticed the y-axis was upside down (I found this thread while googling how to invert it).

Cartesian axes constructed from the point of view of an image sensor located behind a camera lens have their place, but it's not in general use. Serif, we need axis inversion, school kids (future designers) all over the world are learning vector-space analysis based on Descarte's original 'right-way-up' axes. 

Meanwhile, I can work with AFD using the simple expedient of multiplying all my y-coordinates by -1. That isn't the problem. I can't routinely THINK upside down, that's the problem! Here's an example. I draw a brick wall being built on the origin of a document dimensioned in millimetres. Currently, it's 1000mm tall. So in AFD, the top is at the point (0, -1000, 0). Suppose its builder lays 4 additional courses of bricks, adding say 500mm to its height, I calculate the top at the point (0, -1000, 0) + (0, 500, 0). In AFD, it will be redrawn half as tall as it was and one third the height it should be. A trivial example, but it illustrates how real world assumptions promote calculation errors when using an inverted y-axis. AFD needs an 'Alice' tool that flips its world the right way up.

Thanks.

Tirmuncq, Nottingham

[MickM]

MEANWHILE, 1 MORE YEAR LATER...

Thought I'd also add my voice to this one. While I'm not 100% sure, I think the whole notion of a coordinate system with an origin at the top left is because of computers and their menubars on top (with fixed things like the Apple Menu at the top left) and old window resize handles at the bottom right. I see the sense that coordinate system makes for a computer windowing system, but the rest of us (scientists, engineers, EVERY kid at school that ever did math) have always used, and will always use, a universally standard Cartesian coordinate system with the origin at the bottom left... Could the developers of Affinity Designer please make this an option. 

[Shaun_M]

Hello Affinity team.... is there any indication when this origin shift option will become a reality?

Many thanks.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Shaun_M said:

Hello Affinity team.... is there any indication when this origin shift option will become a reality?

Many thanks.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

The Serif team generally do not comment in this part of the forum, and also generally do not provide any information about forthcoming functions until they have reached the stage of development where they are about to appear (or have appeared) in a beta release.

[Joao Silva]

So... no news yet?

[Unlikely Moniker]

Also hoping for ability to flip ruler scales/set origin at bottom left

[Cleanest Hippie]

Just thought i'd put myself out there as also wanting this feature. while i do prefer the computer plane (0,0 top-left), some tools that i send my graphics to use the Y-axis reversed. so when im specifying points from centre, i always have to remember to add negative (-) to the second point. it's not a huge deal, but it'd be nice to have the option. it would also be nice if it was project specific. that way, i can save different projects for these tools with the different ruler settings

Edited September 15, 2021 by Cleanest Hippie

[Ken Kopecky]

Adding my two cents.  The upside-down y-axis makes no sense for designing my woodworking templates!  I build toy trucks.  The ground should be zero.  I'm annoyed.

 

Ken

 

[PaulEC]

I must agree that, as someone who uses 3D software a lot, it does make more sense for the 0 of Y to be at the bottom (at ground level) rather than being dependant on the size of the image you are using. In other words, measuring from the ground upwards, rather than from some "random" height above measuring downwards.