Snapping Grid

[AdamW]

The snapping grid is not flexible enough for my requirements. Is there going to be any way to set up a user defined snap grid spacing?

[TonyB]

I would be interested to know what the use case for a user defined snap grid is. If the user can snap to a units like pixel and centimetre also snap to a dynamic grid then I was hoping that should cover most use cases.

 

We can always add a user defined grid, it's just I have never found them that useful in practice. 

[AdamW]

Well I can suggest a couple off the top of my head - there's usually more than one way to skin a cat so I don't know whether you'll find them convincing.

 

First case, I was creating an icon. I set up my document size to 32 pixels x 32 pixels and I know I want to draw my 1 pixel wide lines centred on half pixel boundaries. Unfortunately with a document this size on my display I have to zoom in quite a lot before AD decides to draw grid lines at half pixels. Perhaps in this instance you could argue it's a question of how closely the grid lines are spaced by default for a given zoom, but that's probably hard to guess right all the time without a hint, say a threshold, from the user. May as well set up a custom grid.

 

As a second case, take compiling a sprite sheet. I have a few dozen images and bits and bobs I've dragged in from the file system that are all again, say, nominally 32 pixels square. They're currently scattered all over my workspace and I want to line them up on a nice 32 pixel grid. Perhaps in this instance dynamic snapping might do it for me as they will all ultimately be lined up with each other, but my instinct would be to set up a custom grid to help and just slot them all into place.

[TonyB]

In your first case then snap to units:pixels should do what you want. Snap to pixels will also snap to half pixels for the very reason you stated.

 

Your second case is interesting but I doubt most people would be bothered to setup a 32px grid but I guess we could add the feature later. I would still keep the default to dynamic grid as I think its more helpful most of the time.

[AdamW]

Thanks. Snap to pixels does snap to half pixels. I'd prefer to see what I'm snapping to though.

[Dave Harris]

We do support snapping to guides, which ought to be useful for the sprite grid. To create a guide, you need to make sure rulers are visible, and then use the mouse to drag from the ruler onto the page. Alternatively, use View/Guide Manager... I imagine you'd want them more than 32 pixels apart so as to have a gap between the snapped sprites. Then you need to enable Snap to Guides (it's disabled by default).

 

Perhaps an option to create a regular grid of guides could be part of the Guides Manager, and would avoid the need for a user-defined grid. Then again, it's not that hard to create them by hand.

[bpedit]

Designer has possibly the most robust snapping options I've seen. Not sure why you would want to preclude allowing an adjustable grid. One of my applications of a vector program is production of guitar chord diagrams. Dots representing fretted strings are best snapped to position. They snap on the strings (easy) but between the frets (hmmm). Fret spacing is different than string spacing so a rectangular matrix doesn't suffice. And the fact that, at a given screen magnification, the grid is of a fixed size dictates restraints on the relative size of the image. I.e., don't want to be forced to use your rigid choice of spacing.

I used guides to resolve this but it required extra work especially since, to place the guides, I had to use devices other than snapping to a grid to yield the spacing I wanted for the guides. To make matters worse, I realized I wanted my diagram a bit larger. With an adjustable grid I would only need to resize. But with guides, each one had to be repositioned by hand. Furthermore, before repositioning by hand, I had to make a temporary mock-up of lines that could be evenly distributed for which to realign the guides.

[TonyB]

More flexible guides are on our feature roadmap.

[bpedit]

Thank you. This is remarkable software for an early incarnation, keep it up. Can't wait to see arrowheads on the roadmap so I can trash AI, update to Yosemite, install Xcode 6 and update my apps.