S1monSays

Thanks & thanks for your patience. I didn't expect developers to read my (or other people's rants "down here"). I am also aware that the world has moved on to V2.0 ... then again, all the "legacy" tools I used 10, 20 years ago had basic functionality (like the spiral, the cutting tool, a distribute function) that are nonexistent AD V1.9 which doesn't really make sense to me as - at least in my world - where you start with the basics and THEN add the bells and whistles. But having worked in marketing for 15+ years, I know that you need to sometimes need to be different so people are noticing you... so I re-installed Inkscape and Corel!Draw in parallel and fabri-cobbled together a "unique" workflow until I know whether I want to stick with Serif (I just might, as I really, really hate Adobe!).

Same problem with nVIDIA GPU on a DELL running win10. Solution: in NVIDIA System manager, go to 3D settings. Ad Affinity Designer to the list of Programs. Then tell Affinity to use the DUMB onboard GPU ... no more crashes for now... Serif should look into this. When I am using a 3D-optimized computer, I don't expect a graphics software to act up and cause problems. Now the fault might be with the nVidia drivers (which wouldn't surprise anybody) but maybe there could be some communication from Serif warning users about this. Took me a while to figure this out and if this happens close to a deadline, you could be losing quite some money.

...two years later... Quickest way: Open Rhino 3D: Draw a line of the desired length Use "divide by" , enter "30" Export as SVG into Affinity Designer No, seriously: Just make a vertical line at the STARTING point of your line and make X+1 copies of it. Move the last element over, so it intersects with the END point of your line. Now just use the "Distribute horizontally" command on all the new vertical lines and your line is intersected by evenly spaced lines ...now just select them all and use DIVIDE... done! Oh, wait... we are in Affinity Designer where this simple operation will NOT result in a divided line but in all the lines disappearing!!! But not all is lost: just connect the first two intersecting points, creating a (diagonal) 1/X snippet of your line, CTRL+move it to effectively make an extension and then just keep hitting CTRL+J, each time adding another segment of the desired length until you reached the end of your original diagonal line, now consisting of X segments.

3rd time in 2 days that I end up here because Affinity Designer lacks the most fundamental tools... absolutely unbelievable. I just checked: Aldus/Adobe Freehand MX (2002): spiral tool present AI (CS 6): spiral tool is there Corel Draw 2019: spiral too available Rhino CAD: has spiral tool Inkscape: yup, has a spiral tool Affinity Designer V1.10.5 (end of 2022): NIX, NADA, NOTHING Unbelievable. I'm slowly beginning to suspect that AD is optimized for the quick production of flashy eye candy but not for the professional development of user interfaces, diagrams, illustration, technical documentation or how-tos...

This is about the 10th time in a week that I Google "Where is XX function in Affinity Designer" (switching over from AI) - to end up here where somebody is describing a "potential future function" - FIVE YEARS AGO??? I hope sb. at Serif is reading this: you guys need to fix your software development process ... PRONTO!

To be honest, I was actually a little bit shocked when I found out that there is no morph/blend/tween function implemented in AD. I mean it's a fundamental function in all vector programs I encountered over the years: Aldus Freehand (later Adobe Freehand) had it, CorelDraw does, AI of course and even CAD packages offer it these days. What's worse is that people have apparently been telling Serif since 2015 that this function is a must. That's EIGHT YEARS! I must say that I am sometimes truly baffled about the number of significant shortcomings in the designer application (array function, aligning objects along a curve (w/o the text path workaround), proper implementation of boolean functions (one that's not producing 2 useless shapes and 3 random artefacts when your cutting object is a closed topology), perspective adjustments of shapes/groups etc. are other known deficits that simply leave me speechless). I mean, that's just simple, basic stuff that's still not there! Correct me if I am wrong but I am under the impression that the software is mostly being built by young programmers with no first-hand knowledge of the established workflows that are in place across the creative industry... if that's the case, then the product managers really need to up their game and start looking into an improved development process like the co-creation approach you find in the development of the Blender rendering/modelling application. (about me: industrial designer & design manager and team lead in the consumer industry for 25+ years). When V2 came out, one of our designers yelled: "Designer V2 - now with basic functions that almost work!" (I understand the frustration, as management had forced the creative team to make the switch from Adobe to Affinity, promising them a mature product environment and a smooth workflow... yeah, right.)