Snapping sometimes doesn't work

[Jeremy Bohn]

Object snapping doesn't seem to work in certain cases. I wonder if it's by design, and if so I find it highly frustrating. For instance:

- option-drag to make a copy of an object. No snapping occurs. I first have to let go of the object and then when I drag it around again, the snapping returns.

- snapping doesn't seem to occur when I create layers, I think. This one's a little less clear because I'm not exactly sure what's causing it, but I think when I create a new layer in the Layers panel and drag objects to it, they will only snap to objects in that same layer and ignore objects in another layer. This gets really frustrating if I create a layer for background objects and want to line up text frames I create in a different layer.

Unless I'm missing something, maybe a setting somewhere?

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

option-drag to make a copy of an object. No snapping occurs. I first have to let go of the object and then when I drag it around again, the snapping returns.

I believe that's intentional, for the case where you do not want snapping. If you want to make a copy that will snap use Cmd+Drag.

 

4 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

snapping doesn't seem to occur when I create layers, I think. This one's a little less clear because I'm not exactly sure what's causing it, but I think when I create a new layer in the Layers panel and drag objects to it, they will only snap to objects in that same layer and ignore objects in another layer. This gets really frustrating if I create a layer for background objects and want to line up text frames I create in a different layer.

Purely a guess, but I would start by checking what you have chosen as Snapping Candidates in your Snapping options. There are some layer-related options in there:

[Jeremy Bohn]

Thank you! The snap while copying thing I'll have to get used to. I wish they had switched it the other way around: option to drag-copy-snap and command to drag-copy-snappless. I guess they did it just to bug the InDesigners.

I had looked at the Snapping Options before and I had no idea what Candidates meant for some reason. Also because it says "Candidates: Candidates List" to me was confusing because of the duplicate word. Anyway, changing it to All Layers is what I want, and in general would mostly always want so I'd like to be able to change that default setting instead of changing it every time.

EDIT > never mind, the setting seems to stick. Once I change it, existing and new files are set to All Layers.

[garrettm30]

The candidates refer to which objects get considered for snapping. In a document with potentially thousands of objects, allowing them all to be candidates could be a performance issue or even a usability issue. For this reason, there are different modes available for limiting which objects are candidates for snapping. Candidate List is one of those options, but it might take a video to explain how it works. This Designer tutorial is good at explaining it, and it is quite relevant to Publisher:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/designer/desktop/video/301797237