Marinaa

I was having an identical issue to Kdiver25, and realized that you can set the blend mode to "erase". It will create a transparent cutout in the shape below it. It works just like the "subtract" function that most people are used to, but it's even more convenient because it's non-destructive. This still doesn't help if you are required to expand all strokes for publishing, though.
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Although the above worked for me in this case, I also had to find a workaround for a different part of my project because I couldn't expand a brush stroke, nor create a custom true vector brush. I would consider that a pretty essential feature in a professional workflow, and I look forward to seeing it eventually implemented.

Hi 00Ghz,
Thanks for the file. There's no compound objects in your .afdesign file (recognised as such in AD). Affinity Designer is importing them as flattened shapes. You can still "break" the elements going to the menu Layer ▹ Geometry ▹ Divide, but it's not exatly the same thing.
If they were originally saved in the SVG as compound objects, i'm sure we are able to import them as such, but currently it's not possible/implemented.
It would be interesting if you could also post the original SVG with a small sample of the icons (you can delete the rest) so we can take a look at it.

oh god! so there's literally only 2 genuine vector brushes in the whole programme and you cannot even create your own?! Is this going to be added to soon? I don't see why if we can create raster brushes we cannot create basic shape brushes.

Hi is this still not a feature then in 2020? And what do you mean by the 'Basic Category (vector based)'? because ALL of them on the designer persona are vectors and so should be easily expandable. I went through a lot of them just now even the really basic looking ones and couldn't find any that expand.

@mich_, @zangad, @Peter Scott, @Marinaa
Welcome to all of you to the Serif Affinity forums   
It says a lot about this feature request that so many potential customers want to create an account to add to this thread.
To all readers,
You may be pleased to hear that I understand this feature is being worked on currently, though I do not know of the exact progress.