Kevin B

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

Hi Tim, I've upgraded to V2 Universal license so using Designer 2.03, but I still have the above situation with one specific .dwg file. It opens in Autocad TrueView 2023 but takes time, TrueView reports that it had to be recovered and errors were repaired and an element deleted, so it has/had something strange in it. After the TrueView repair it still wouldn't open in Designer, just hangs on Loading 1 document. Also, I see that it was created with AutoCAD 2011 so a bit old when the final revision was published in January 2020. My other .dwg and .dxf files open properly. It's not a problem for my work right now so no urgency, perhaps your devs could take a look at it to see what gremlin is hidden inside. I would have to send it to you privately. Hello Dampsquid -- have had luck opening your CAD files with Designer 2.03? Thanks for your assistance, much appreciated! Kevin

Hi Jose, Welcome to the Affinity forum, here you'll find some very helpful users and many with Adobe experience like you have, seem to be lots of refugees from that world. I'm still at semi-newbie stage but maybe one of my previous posts will add to what Cooner and Prophet replied above, and I believe that their feedback is correct: With version 2 I'm going to dive back into Affinity deeper, I just purchased the Universal License before the discount expired. I used the Studio Link feature a bit and found it very useful, in a Publisher document I could include large CAD drawings and edit them handily with the Designer Persona. Good Luck! Kevin

Hi Nathan, So would this possible issue fix include the anchor ordering in the anchors panel? I was hoping that version 2 would solve this but it hasn't. I really need to be able to control the order of anchors instead of always being alphabetic. Otherwise it's just too mind-boggling trying to make sense of the document structure with them out of order of their real position. Even if the final PDF does put them in the correct order as they are on the pages. Thanks, Kevin

Hi Tim, I will do as you instructed and thanks for your assistance. Regards, Kevin

Hi Designer 2 Users, I have a .dwg file created in 2020 that opens properly in DWG TrueView 2023, but Designer 2 just hangs forever trying to open it. Some other .dwgs that I have open properly in Designer 2, but many just hang with the status reading Loading document 1 and nothing happens other than the cooling fan spinning-up to high speed. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks in advance. Kevin

Hi SubTric, Your question of "Probably worth me asking if there is away to have anchors in the anchor pane display in a remotely sensible order as well?" I wish there was a manner to put them in the same sensible order as they are on the pages, but it appears to be impossible and is a real impediment to creating a larger PDF document with lots of bookmarks. I haven't seen any sign that Affinity is going to sort this out, unfortunately. I hope they can solve your anchors problem, but seems the moderator went quiet on you. Regards, Kevin

Hi Lukc666 and Stokerg, I'm still new to Affinity Publisher, but issue #2 has been a headache to me as well. Yes, the bookmarks in the published PDF will be in the correct order according to where the anchors really are placed . . . . but the bugger is that in the Anchors panel they are simply listed in Alphanumerical order, so logically out of their real order. Only manner to put Anchors in a visual order in the panel is with leading numbers, but you don't want those in every bookmark name, would be a hassle to clean them out after every publish. There have been plenty of complaints about this annoyance but who knows when Affinity will fix it, for us it makes AP impractical for any long structured publication, although fine for short ones that don't need bookmarks. I suppose that AP was not designed for long publications, but it has plenty of other benefits for us so we'll stick with it and I'm sure it will progress over time. We evaluated CorelDraw but were scared away by their new owners KKR and a pricey subscription plan that together has angered lots of their users. I searched for "Affinity" on the CorelDraw user forum and discovered that plenty of their long-time users are evaluating or already using a Serif software! We decided not to jump in to that unknown future, and Adobe we won't touch in any manner. We use PDF-XChange Editor instead of Acrobat and are very happy with it. I hope the above is useful to you! Regards, Kevin

Hi Walt, Ahhhhh, OK, now I see how it works, great explanation you gave me, heck I never even noticed the new tab that opened. I came to the word "tab" and thought, "tab, what tab"? . . . . silly me, didn't even see it! This is what I didn't fully realize, I was thinking that once a file was imported/placed into Publisher, it was treated like any other object on the page -- now I see the important difference. Now that I understand the functionality here I really do like it, will be very useful because I'm brining in large CAD-to-PDF files, converted to .afdesign files, and then embedded or linked. Easily going to Designer to use it's full power will be very useful. The Publisher help manual should explain this better, seems it doesn't say any more than "Use Studio Link with Personas and you'll be happy"! Well, now I am after you explained it to me -- thanks again Walt for your quick assistance! Affinity should contract you and a few of the other all-stars to beef up their user manual, it's not bad but does seem that a lot of topics could use improved explanations. There's a lot of functionality in the Affinity apps at 55 euro each, seems to me the full suite is a bargain compared to the competition. Kind Regards, Kevin