Nikkwong

Thank you for the kind and thoughtful responses. I would still like to push back that the smart mode (or smart nodes) are not the same thing—the curvature tool in Illustrator produces curves that have perfect curvature continuity. You can see this if you analyze the continuity of the curves that are created with the curvature tool. There is only one solvable position of handles for a given position of path points on a given curve. The smart nodes does not work in this fashion—I'm not entirely sure how it determines where to place handles for a given set of path points, but the result ends up being less aesthetically pleasing and requires more manual positioning, IMO. Thank you for the discussion and consideration.

The curvature tool has been talked about in many prior posts, but the Affinity team has never commented on it, and the community has no way to know whether it's on the roadmap or not. There are many illustrator users who will not jump ship to Affinity Designer until some version of the curvature tool is in place; as it's impossible to achieve perfect curvature for path segments with current tools alone. I'm curious as to whether anyone on the forum has any information or workarounds that they've found. I'd like to enjoy Designer's suite of tools but need this functionality to work properly first