Kevin B

Bbrother, I fully agree with you, I asked about the anchor order (in the panel) a long time ago, maybe two years or more, but was told that the present behavior is intentional. I suppose the work-around with a TOC suggested by MikeT will work efficiently but I haven't tried it, I'm doing as Ragundo and post-processing in my PDF editor, PDF-Xchange. Or maybe I'm missing something fundamental about anchors, I don't know, but that could be the case! Regards, Kevin

Thanks very much @lacerto for your valuable input, I will work with PDFs from the CAD authors as there's really no visual difference that would affect my work. Like you wrote, Affinity apps import and convert PDFs very well so I'll work with .afdesign format and export to PDF or SVG as needed. Regards, Kevin

Hi Lacerto, Thanks for your quick reply and good information. Ah yes, I should have mentioned layers and if I need them or not. Basically not needed because the layers that the CAD authors create are aimed at the construction aspect (ship-building here) and of no relevance or benefit to my work. Usually a layer contains objects that I do need and other objects that I don't, so I simply have to delete manually what I don't need. A bit of remaining clutter is not so detrimental, my annotations and symbol overlays stand out well enough for the viewer to see, and they just disregard the background bits. The CAD authors will not do anything specific for my work, I'm in another later work-flow that they aren't responsible for, I can't even contact them directly. So if layer import is not necessary and no CAD processing specific to me is available, I suppose a simple PDF converted to .afdesign is sufficient, and really maybe I don't have a choice. I hope that Affinity can improve their .dwg import process for all of you that really do need that capability in your work. Thanks again for your assistance, it's much appreciated. Kevin

Hi All, I'm dropping this question here since this is the most recent topic related to CAD, and I'm no expert on the topic myself. I want to know if there is any difference in the simple visual content, between 1) importing / opening a .dwg file directly into Designer, and 2) import / open a PDF that was published / exported from the same .dwg file and application? In Designer, I need to import and work with only what is visual and nothing hidden in the file like dimensions, simplified and repurposed for training instructions. It would not be exported back to .dwg format or enter the CAD workflow in any way. I was thinking that I would have a more pure conversion to .afdesign format if I avoided the PDF stage, but that is something that I made up and possibly (probably) isn't not valid. Perhaps, regardless of the process, Designer is going to put it all in its own format and I probably wouldn't see any difference. Like @lacerto wrote above about the Affinity DWG import filter, I have not had much luck opening that filetype and gave up on it all. If a PDF is all that I need then much simpler as I don't have to ask the CAD author for a copy of their .dwg -- they don't like to hand those out to just anybody. Thanks for your input on this, any suggestions are appreciated. Kevin

Hi Sean, Sorry, now I see that I'm in the V2 bugs on Mac OS instead of Windows OS that I'm using. Move this post over there if you want to, or maybe it applies to both OSs. How are the devs doing on this issue, no hurry for the moment but just curious. That file is not a real-world working version for me, just a tester that I had on hand. In the near future I'll be needing to open some working .dwgs to adapt / repurpose them for training purposes. However, all that I really need from a dwg is the visual content and a lot of that I'll edit or delete to simplify the visuals. Whatever is hidden in the depths of the file is probably not useful to me (even measurements) and I would not be exporting as a dwg to re-enter the engineering workflow. No engineer in his/her right mind would touch a CAD drawing after I edited and muffed-it all up, their Autocad would reject it immediately! 😁😅 Thanks for your assistance! Kevin

Good Morning Sean, Thanks for your quick reply and the file is uploaded. No hurry on this, I'll monitor this post for your reply whenever convenient to you. Cheers, Kevin

Hello Tim or Sean or Patrick, I'm having problems again when I try to open a .dwg file. It opens but then just hangs at "not responding" when I try to do something simple, so then I have to close it with Task Manager. I just updated to version 2.5.5 and have not tried to open a .dwg recently using the previous version. My OS is Windows 11 with the latest update. Sometimes I select "sanitise document" in the open dialog, not sure exactly what it does but something positive, I imagine. I will send you the .dwg file if you want to inspect it, it's not so old but probably something strange in it. It opens properly in DWG TrueView 2025. Thank you for your assistance! Kevin

Hi Ssinssrigg, I would like to have that feature as well but I don't think it will happen. As a work-around, I create or open an svg file in Af Designer and export it to a pdf file. I upload the pdf to a free converter from IDR Solutions in the UK, and very quickly it creates a zip file to download. https://www.idrsolutions.com/online-pdf-to-html5-converter Inside the zip is an index.html file, a few other small files, and a sub-folder holding the source file -- the magic is that the source file is the original svg not the pdf that I uploaded, the pdf is nowhere to be seen. I don't know how but IDR extracts the svg out of the pdf -- maybe in developer terms it's simple but seems like magic to me! I suppose that the pdf is just an envelope for the svg that Af Designer created. Click index.html and a handy viewer opens with the graphic file inside, with zoom and pan tools. With that, I can change the name of the html file and upload the folder to a website and link to it. You can also select No Viewer to have it open in a plain browser window. The graphics are just as clean and zoomable as the original svg that I converted to pdf. In fact, the svg came from a dwg that I converted in Af Designer, so it all remained fully vector to the final html version. Maybe this will be useful to you or another user. IDR Solutions sells this only to enterprise clients and does not allow them to resell the service online. It's the only tool like it that I have found, it's been free since I found it a few years ago but who knows what the future could hold. Good Luck, Kevin

Hi Dan, Thanks very much for your quick reply and yes that solved it -- silly me, I didn't even see the Wrapping icons on the tool bar, I went straight up to the Text menu and also the Text Frame panel. Staring me in the face was the "Wrap Now" command on the toolbar!🤣 Your quick support is much appreciated, as always! Well, hopefully Designer will have this cool feature one day, not essential but would spice up my work there with boring manuals and datasheets. Designer opened a 42MB .dwg file with 12 billion+ elements in it (more or less!) and it went pretty quickly, and on a not-new portable computer as well. Exported a perfect .pdf file in a flash, so I'm very happy with this new feature of .dwg import. As for exporting to .dwg/.dxf as many are asking for, personally I don't need it -- they give me .dwgs to morph into something else and none of them will re-enter the CAD workflow. I don't really want Designer to morph into a CAD program with all that extra cost and complication, or, perhaps only as an optional paid side-version. On the other hand, .html export would be very handy to a good number of us, but you know that already! I wish that I could export an .svg file (from a drawing file) already packaged inside of an .html file, and with that crazy viewbox setting already sorted-out . . . . maybe in a future release. Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Hi All, I don't have exactly the same issue as above (or don't think so anyway) but there's plenty of experts here, so I figured this is a good spot to post. So, in Publisher 1 I was able to utilize text wrapping and I don't remember having any difficulty to figure it out. I just imported a file from Publisher 1 into Publisher 2.3, in addition to whacking-out the text, the text wrap disappeared and I can't apply it again. I replaced the image but that didn't do it. Text frame setting Ignore Text Wraps is not set. What puzzles me is there doesn't seem to be a button like "Set Wrapping Now" or something that clearly activates it, only a wrap configuration setting. Really, I'm not using Publisher much, I use Designer more often but I don't see that text wrapping is a feature in Designer -- is that correct? I see in the help file Text on a path but nothing specifically about wrapping a text frame around an object. Thanks for any suggestions! Kevin

Hi Dom, I just entered your RAL Classic palette into Version 2 and it's very handy again, so I want to thank you for your time to create and share it with us. I imported the .pdf version and saved it as an .affdesign file, I can keep it open for color reference while working on other files in Designer. In the swatches studio, I set it to show as a list and that makes it very simple to find and view the swatches, scrolls up and down pretty quickly and the numbers are much easier to read. I even did a test to see if there's any perceptible difference between the .pdf colors and the RAL swatch palette -- all were spot-on perfect without any difference whatsoever. So great work you did there and it saves me a lot of confusion with too many colors available in Designer's native palettes. RAL has plenty for me with simple codes, heck, maybe one day I'll add in their nice names! Cheers, Kevin

Hi Tim, Thank you for the update and I'm happy that you found the gremlin in that file, maybe it's useful as a "worst case scenario" to see how wonky a .dwg can become. That's an archived file so no big deal on how it turns out, when convenient you can send me whatever you come up with and I'll try to open it here, and yes it's bulky with lots of little objects. Thanks for the excellent support, it's much appreciated! Kind Regards, Kevin

Good Morning Gabe, Thanks for the link and the file is uploaded to Dropbox. I tried again to open with Designer 2.04 but still the same symptoms, Designer hangs on "Loading 1 document" and finally I have to close it with Windows 11 Task Manager. This isn't a working file for me so no hurry on my part. If and when you find the gremlin then let me know here just to satisfy my curiosity. My other .dwg files open quickly in Designer and I'm very happy with the new CAD fill access; converting .dwg straight to .afdesign is surely much better than passing it thru .pdf format -- excellent work by the CAD team! Thanks & Regards, Kevin

Well, I'm very happy with the Measure Tool as a new feature, sure it could be improved over time but I believe it's a decent start for a 50€ non-subscription software. The CAD import is indeed useful to me, but the more CAD tools they add in the closer we come to something like Corel Technical at 499,00 €/year -- ten times the cost of Affinity Designer in just one year. Oh, and Corel is owned by KKR via a holding company with the funny name of ALLUDO, along with a mix of other software companies. I'm sure that KKR has much more interest in making and hording money than in graphic design software and its humble users . . . . I prefer the Serif Affinity approach much more. Perhaps the solution is as@firstdefence wrote of, a CAD add-on tool named Hot Doors CADtools that the CAD-oriented Designer users could purchase as needed. Just my two cents worth! K 499,00 €/

Hi Tim, Thanks for your quick reply, much appreciated. I agree it must be a bad file, I found on the Autodesk website some sample .dwg files and they all open correctly. I don't want to bother the support team as this isn't a working file for me, I'm sure they have plenty to do already. I don't see any recent forum posts about opening .dwg files, so Designer 2.03 must have solved the problem and that's good enough for me. Or, if they want to research what gremlin is causing Designer to hang, then I can send them a copy, just keep it in-house and yes a private upload link to send it. Thanks & Regards, Kevin