Designer and Photo are great apps for designing presentation boards for architectural puropses.
Everyone who knows the workflow for this kind of job understand the demand of app that handles both vector and raster images. Usually you import pdf from cad and start to add trees, sky images and text, especially when you are working with facades or sections.
It is so great that file format is same in Photo and Designer. You can tweak raster images easily and modify vector lines without pain.
But I am missing one special feature in Designer: select similar line weight, colour, line type and so on. I hope that you can add this feature soon.
I don't really think it would disrupt any workflow with the correct management. Some (me included) have been asking for support for scaled drawing, which could be seen as part of this "CAD persona", but could benefit even more. I have also seen a lot more requests in the same direction, some that could be achieved using a plugin architecture like math-based/technical drawing some that really depend on Serif.
I sincerely do not expect Serif to add a persona for technical drawing or even to fork it into a fully fledged app for that but I understand some few helper tools could be added seamlessly to everyone's workflow to achieve the same result. As we speak, I'm going through the experience of creating a full technical drawing document (CAD like) using AfD and as of right now I miss only some few tools to be able to work better/faster:
scales: a simple math can be done by hand to have scales but having this math done by the app makes working with it faster
vector textures: AfD already supports raster textures but being able to define a real vector texture would be nicer
leaders: can be achieved by using separately a line and a text but these are either two separated objects or a group, which is a little more tricky to handle, or even a symbol
dimension lines: as with leaders, can be achieved with individual objects, or a group, or a symbol
trim: can also be worked around using geometry (AfD geometry tools are way better than Illustrator, working as I expect them to), it is more a bad habit I got from the very first time I messed around a CAD but sure comes in handy sometimes, even in non-technical drawings
offset: Illustrator has a tool to convert the border of an object into another independent object but AfD cannot
With the right set of API available, most of these tools (leaders, dimension lines, trim, offset) could be created by 3rd-parties with no further need for Serif's involvement. To some of these, there are already some suggestion topics going on, I suggest following and supporting them:
I'm also a strong supporter of Serif adding an API so we could create extensions to Affinity apps, which could be used to add lots more tools (like means to support more math-based drawing tools or even some of the tools I mentioned to be missing) and even support for reading/writing DWG files (and well as many others). I'd also suggest supporting this:
One could say we're trying to transform AfD into a CAD but both are (for the most part) only drawing apps sporting a different set of tools so they are not worlds apart. An example of that is, as I already mentioned, I'm working full technical drawings using AfD and it is already not that hard to be done. Have you tried doing anythink like this? Have you missed any other tools I have not mentioned?
