espalia

@MEB
Part of what is so frustrating about this issue is the tone of the response users receive from the Moderators. Responses from the moderators seem to purposefully ignore what we are saying then treat us like we're just ignorant, with phrases like "just try it". Many, many contributors to this forum have taken the time to be very specific about why this issue is so important. Many users go out of their way to explicitly explain that they understand the current functionality to ward off the snide comments, but either get them anyway or are completely ignored. My last post received no response whatsoever from Affinity - and I was very polite. 
Your users are telling you that some of us want to see the objects that cross the boundary of the clipboard without it being clipped. There's nothing to argue about - we know we want it and we're asking for it. We don't care about objects that don't cross the boundary. It's completely irrelevant. Allowing your users to control the view functionality of the clipboard with a simple toggle feels like the teeniest, tiniest ask of all time. If you cannot provide a satisfying reason for why this small change can't be made you will continue to frustrate and lose users. 

@MEB
Part of what is so frustrating about this issue is the tone of the response users receive from the Moderators. Responses from the moderators seem to purposefully ignore what we are saying then treat us like we're just ignorant, with phrases like "just try it". Many, many contributors to this forum have taken the time to be very specific about why this issue is so important. Many users go out of their way to explicitly explain that they understand the current functionality to ward off the snide comments, but either get them anyway or are completely ignored. My last post received no response whatsoever from Affinity - and I was very polite. 
Your users are telling you that some of us want to see the objects that cross the boundary of the clipboard without it being clipped. There's nothing to argue about - we know we want it and we're asking for it. We don't care about objects that don't cross the boundary. It's completely irrelevant. Allowing your users to control the view functionality of the clipboard with a simple toggle feels like the teeniest, tiniest ask of all time. If you cannot provide a satisfying reason for why this small change can't be made you will continue to frustrate and lose users. 

Hi all,
I am completely new to AD and coming from Illustrator and I am really struggling with this topic. It is an essential part of my AI workflow that I can put reference images in the margin of my workspace and design pieces of my image outside the artboard and then drag them into the artboard to compose them/generate different versions/etc. 
I understand that the artboard acts as its own layer in AD and as long as my other layers are not nested inside the artboard, I can see them past the edges of the board. However, every time I create a new element or copy an element (e.g. by holding down command and dragging) it doesn't paste it to the same layer as the item I am copying is in, it pastes it to the artboard. And it doesn't matter whether I lock the artboard and/or hide the artboard - the outcome is the same. This means every time I make a new element I have to drag it to the right layer in order to work with it.
Is there a solution to this problem? It seems to me a lot of people are saying they rely on the same behavior from Illustrator that I do and I haven't really read a workable solution. To me, it seems like fixing this behavior would be a very close approximation of what a lot of people are looking for. My naive expectation going in is that if I have an objected selected and then I start making a new object (e.g. with the pen tool), then that new object should be created in the same layer as the object I had most reccently selected is located in, not the random artboard 5 layers down. What am I missing here? 
Thanks for any guidance

The reason Serif took this route was, I believe, because they always wanted to cater to the iPadOS crowd, where you'll have a single artboard onscreen (I'm not sure if that's how Affinity apps behave on that platform, as my iPad is too old for me to test them, but even if that isn't the case by design and you can zoom out and rearrange them just like in desktop Affinity apps and Ai, 90% of the time you will work zoomed in because even the bigger iPads Pro are tiny when compared with, say, a 27'' iMac like the one I work with).
As for Ai, guess what, it's the other way around, and you don't see people complaining about it. Sure, you will have to use clipping masks to prevent that from happening, but doing the opposite, i.e. having objects spanning multiple artboards, InDesign/APub-style, is MUCH easier by design.
I've said it before, and I will say it again: this all comes down to a philosophical decision from Serif's developer team regarding workflows. Their “container-like” model makes no sense from a WYSIWYG approach to classical, hand-made artistic workflows… In the real world, if you want to crop your artwork, you have to do it BY HAND, by folding, cutting, erasing, masking, whatever. And anyone with a background in fine arts, life drawing, illustration, yadda yadda, made with real, physical media and supplies, will look at artboards as SHEETS OF PAPER on a desk, atop which stuff can be laid, and not as abstract containers in a database, which have a life of their own and crop stuff automatically.
I warned the Serif dev team about many users potentially becoming unhappy with this model in the long run, and it took them years to even add the option of toggling automatic clipping of objects into artboard boundaries, and only partially at that, with some less than stellar consequences. The only way you can prevent artboards from sucking objects in is by creating one or multiple layers, and disable “Edit All Layers”.
It almost works like Ai, except… you can't quickly switch from one layer to another and select an object from a different layer, or even make a selection of different objects across different layers, without having to go to that ghastly, do-it-all, jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none Layers+Artboards panel. Also, it's not like you could create a super-layer to work around that, as clicking that automatically selects all objects inside all sub-layers.
If I didn't do so already for that last, super-layer idea (maybe I did, but my memory fails me, so please bear with me), I could and should do a video demonstrating just that and its frustrating limitations but, as I've also said several times before, I'm now doing a PhD to become a Design teacher.
I'm not fooling around, and was not joking either when I said my teachers, supervisors, fellow workshop tutors, classmates, students, etc., no longer pay much attention to Affinity Designer (or not as much as they did after the initial hype). I sincerely hope Serif polishes this thing up for v. 2 of the suite, because if Adobe gets their act together (or *gasp* backtracks on their subscription-only model!), they are either toast, or will forever be relegated to third place at best, no matter how much Apple propped Affinity up to keep their long-term frenemy on their toes (something oh-so-convenient considering their upcoming ISA transition, which tends to shake up the market and can be very dangerous to proprietary platforms like the Mac). Ehhh.
Oh, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is… As much as I love and respect Affinity apps – which, mind you, I will always buy, as I feel I have an obligation towards my students to stay informed and know what's out there in the market, and the price of admission is low enough for me not to balk at it – and Serif's lofty goals – again, I know I'm extremely harsh, but I am indeed rooting for them; it's just that I'm not a “yes-man” for anyone, and when I see BS and bad design/UX/etc. I will speak up –, I'm very likely taking some of my upcoming research scholarship allowance and putting it towards a Creative Cloud student subscription, as I will indeed need a graphic design suite for my project at some point (even if it's just to make some diagrams, and edit my final thesis manuscript in InCopy and typeset it in InDesign) and don't have time to deal with these shenanigans or retrain my muscle memory for the next 3-5 years of my life. #sorrynotsorry

Hi all,
I am completely new to AD and coming from Illustrator and I am really struggling with this topic. It is an essential part of my AI workflow that I can put reference images in the margin of my workspace and design pieces of my image outside the artboard and then drag them into the artboard to compose them/generate different versions/etc. 
I understand that the artboard acts as its own layer in AD and as long as my other layers are not nested inside the artboard, I can see them past the edges of the board. However, every time I create a new element or copy an element (e.g. by holding down command and dragging) it doesn't paste it to the same layer as the item I am copying is in, it pastes it to the artboard. And it doesn't matter whether I lock the artboard and/or hide the artboard - the outcome is the same. This means every time I make a new element I have to drag it to the right layer in order to work with it.
Is there a solution to this problem? It seems to me a lot of people are saying they rely on the same behavior from Illustrator that I do and I haven't really read a workable solution. To me, it seems like fixing this behavior would be a very close approximation of what a lot of people are looking for. My naive expectation going in is that if I have an objected selected and then I start making a new object (e.g. with the pen tool), then that new object should be created in the same layer as the object I had most reccently selected is located in, not the random artboard 5 layers down. What am I missing here? 
Thanks for any guidance