I have a friend who has a CNC Plasma cutting table, its 5 feet by 10 feet. Currently he's using it to build flat brackets for the specialty automotive market. He's not CAD-savvy and uses Seimens free Solidworks program to make simple part shapes. We are both gear heads LOL, and I asked him if he could cut a flat pattern for a radiator shroud. Thats the tray/box like thing behind the radiator where the fan goes. I'm not very CAD savvy myself, so I created a detailed dimensional drawing in VISIO, and saved it as a PDF. I was also able to extract the main piece without dimensions and then save that to DWG in Visio. What is pretty cool is that I emailed him the files and he was able to open and edit my DWG-saved file. We haven't cut the shape yet, there's a bit of a logistical problem with him being 100 miles away, but here's an image of my two drawings, and a quick "Illustration" I created in Photoshop plus some test-fit pix. Only used PS because I haven't yet grasped all the image manipulation aspects of Affinity Photo. Just for kicks, I have built a few prototypes to check for fit and dimensional reference, and its worked out pretty good.
Bottom line is that I think DXF and DWG... being the world standard for CAD should get the utmost consideration. I haven't looked at Affinity Designer, but if I could create a component design in Affinity Designer that could be exported as a DXF/DWG I'm halfway on board. Getting Affinity to import/export DXF, DWG, and CDR... well, ca-ching, there goes my credit card. Please work on this.
MyShroud-XDRev3-041420.pdf
MyShroud-XX-Rev4-041420.dwg