Erica

@erica

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she/her
cohost.org/aurahack

freelance illustrator, designer, and idk buncha stuff

@kuraine's wife

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ascari

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Erica @erica6/10/2024, 7:54 PM

Erica @erica

Erica @erica6/10/2024, 7:50 PM

i'm trying to learn affinity designer but man the thing just constantly feels like it's gaslighting me. what is the point of snapping if you're gonna do this shit when i join shapes. why can't i join these two points, why have you disabled that option for no reason. why the fuck can i not even snap to this angled edge. if i draw a six-sided polygon why can i only snap to the 90 degree sides of the shape not any of the actual sides itself. i am not cut out for this shit man!! what is the point of being able to render at any size in vector if it takes me a million years to get a shittier result than something i could do in a raster program in like 12 seconds!!

Erica @erica6/10/2024, 7:54 PM

ive tried being "smart" in the way i think it wants me to be and laying out grids like this for me to path when moving nodes/using the pen tool but even then it's like completely random which lines it'll decide to snap to if it even feels like doing that in the first place.

learning new software is so fucking hard already and i can understand having to adjust around a new workflow but when the software is just capriciously deciding what i can do or can't do with no clear feedback as to why it just makes me angry and want to give up

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in reply to @erica's post:

cerry 🍒@cereza6/10/2024, 7:58 PM

iirc you can pick a point and just hit the backspace or delete key to remove it and it won’t destroy the path like it does in adobe illustrator

Erica @erica6/10/2024, 8:01 PM

that's what i did in this instance but like... (screaming into void here) why does the snapping work like this. why do i have to clean up the shapes like this when i make them, an error that is also caused because i had to make a bizarre concession in the first place from being unable to snap how i actually needed to

this feels less like i'm learning new a language and more like i'm understanding how to soothe a child's tantrum or something it's really annyoing

cerry 🍒@cereza6/10/2024, 8:19 PM

i remember default snap settings in AD being horrendous. in View > Snapping Manager, you can control what AD will snap to, how close do you want your cursor to be before snapping and what objects to consider snapping.
here's my settings, i tried making a couple of quick weirdo shapes and it seems to work fine for me. you can tinker this however you want, the most important settings in your case would be Snap to object geometry and Snap to shape key points i think. the less options AD
my snapping parameters
when you snap to an edge of a path, it should light up like this
test image

you also have these settings on the top bar too which can be of use extra snapping options

Loni CB @loni6/10/2024, 8:05 PM

designer is so infuriating tbh, please youre a vector program you guys should know how to do analytic solutions to your shapes, why is illustrator somehow better in this regard

in reply to @erica's post:

Kate @antumbral6/10/2024, 8:27 PM

I moved to Affinity from the one linux app with the unfortunate name, and I don't regret that but it sure is an incredibly janky product. I hate that when you're zoomed out the display constantly glitches between blurry and sharp, like it's re-compositing all my layers over and over for no reason.

Some of the UI design decisions feel like the work of space aliens too. If it's not little stuff like 'Ctrl+V doesn't create a new document from the clipboard if you have nothing open' it's bigger stuff like 'Why are masks so incredibly inconvenient and why don't adjustment layers work on them even though the UI suggests they will'