[DXF or DWG file import in Affinity Designer]

2 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

Importing DXF format exported from CAD programs in order to create visually appealing commercial artwork suitable for product marketing is squarely within the purview of general-purpose vector-based mainstream 2D illustration and design programs.

And that's why most competing programs provide for it.

And that's why I fully expect that Affinity will also provide for it—when the time is right from a development standpoint—which is entirely and appropriately at the discretion of the company which owns and develops the program.

Like many other desired things, DXF is simply not, at present, at the top of the development priority list, nor should it be. It's not even at the top of the wish lists of most users. And yes, I say this as a technical illustrator.

Affinity is still very much a work-in-progress, and there is still much work of a more foundational nature that needs to be done or tuned.

Meanwhile, there are multiple online and open-source DXF converters. Claiming that Affinity is 'un-usable' is just as silly in this context as it is in any of the threads demanding far more broadly-desired features.

JET
 

As moving designs between several different CAD/CAM programs using DXF as the standard interchange format is a fundamental and essential part of my workflow, it proved to be too much of a headache to use external format converters (which usually mangle the drawing in the process), and in the end I went back to the more mature vector drawing program I was using before I tried out Affinity. As I'm no longer an Affinity user I don't know what "more foundational" deficiencies you are hinting at, but perhaps if Affinity is at as such a primitive stage of development, it should still be in beta and not a commercial product with version number 1.8.whatever.

[Spiro Splines]

Inkscape has a killer feature called spiro splines. It's really amazing how much easier it is to draw and manipulate perfectly smooth, beautiful curves with spiro mode turned on. AD's 'smart curves' are no comparison.

[DXF or DWG file import in Affinity Designer]

5 hours ago, Borud said:

Not to sound negative, but I don’t think Affinity Designer will get DXF or DWG support any time soon.  It has been years now and this isn’t something that is a priority. How about some crowd funding effort to have someone develop a conversion tool?  Does anyone know of any developers who could do this?

If you're willing to use an external program to do the conversion, Inkscape already exists and is free and cross-platform. It isn't perfect but I'd rather see some effort put into improving Inkscape's DXF import/export support than writing an entirely new program.

[DXF or DWG file import in Affinity Designer]

+1 DXF import/export would be useful for me too. Right now I'm keeping Inkscape around just to do file format translation.