jeff

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.
 

Hi there! I'm loving the new update, and Affinity Designer in general. I've been using it a few weeks and this is the first vector design program I've ever loved. But of course, there's stuff I'd love to see added. The new Node Transform Mode is an excellent (and badly wanted) addition, but I can't find a hotkey for it. If there isn't one, can we get one?
 
On that note, the ability to search hotkeys would be handy as well.
 
Cheers,
cj

Just thought I'd share this. I frequently have to add dimensions to my design work to communicate to developers the specifics of a layout. Currently, there isn't a feature to create these in AD, so I've cobbled together my own workaround version using constrained objects. The benefit is it's pretty easy to resize the dimension to match the size of the element being measured. The downside, you will still have to enter all the numeric dimension manually. Ugh! I know, but a quick check of the Transform module will tell you what size to enter. One other flaw with this system is it doesn't work so well with very small measurements. Anything below 10px vertical and 30px horizontal will have to be manually adjusted because of limitations to how constraints work. Just resize one to below these thresholds and you'll see what I mean. If you know to avoid this situation, please share. To help with this, I made some smaller measurements to get you started. One other item I added to the file is a dark and light overlay to help make the dimensions easier to read. Use the dark one on dark interfaces and the light on lighter ones. There are a couple examples included that illustrate how to use them.
It may seem that the downsides outweigh the benefit, but if you have to have dimensions, then even the seemingly small benefit of easy resizing adds up to hours of time saved on large projects. Hopefully, you find this useful.
 
 
dimensions_template.afdesign

Just thought I'd share this. I frequently have to add dimensions to my design work to communicate to developers the specifics of a layout. Currently, there isn't a feature to create these in AD, so I've cobbled together my own workaround version using constrained objects. The benefit is it's pretty easy to resize the dimension to match the size of the element being measured. The downside, you will still have to enter all the numeric dimension manually. Ugh! I know, but a quick check of the Transform module will tell you what size to enter. One other flaw with this system is it doesn't work so well with very small measurements. Anything below 10px vertical and 30px horizontal will have to be manually adjusted because of limitations to how constraints work. Just resize one to below these thresholds and you'll see what I mean. If you know to avoid this situation, please share. To help with this, I made some smaller measurements to get you started. One other item I added to the file is a dark and light overlay to help make the dimensions easier to read. Use the dark one on dark interfaces and the light on lighter ones. There are a couple examples included that illustrate how to use them.
It may seem that the downsides outweigh the benefit, but if you have to have dimensions, then even the seemingly small benefit of easy resizing adds up to hours of time saved on large projects. Hopefully, you find this useful.
 
 
dimensions_template.afdesign

Bearing in my that we are not doing "proper" 3D, what dimensioning tools would be expect?  They essentially have to work in 2D, but can reference grid axis.  I have some ideas in my head, but I just want to see what other people are thinking.
 
I'm not saying when this will happen, just that I can start thinking about it, and make a note of things.
 

As soon as the axonometric grids functionality is in place, dimension tools is going to look like a glaring omission.
Take all the time you need...you know, 10-15 minutes.
JET

Motion seconded.  There's a space for vector tools between sketching and full-on CAD, e.g. interior design and layout work, where first-class tools to see and specify dimensions are super, super useful.

A dimensions tool to calculate, show, and scale objects(Similar to CAD), this feature is really useful, I hope someone agree.

Ok, I know I am being picky about this, but it seems to me to make more sense that the tab order of the Transform Panel would be X, Y, W, H.  Currently, if you type in the Width, then tab, you are at the Y position.  Possibly this bothers me due to OLD HABITS, but it seems that one tab from Width should be Height.  Also, one tab from X should be Y,  not the Width.
 
 

Hi guys,
 
I know it's at least the second time I'm complaining about this, but this time Affinity's behaviour is really irking me big time. Just to freshen up your memory (and because the earlier behaviour, while still undesirable, wasn't all that bad compared to the current one), last time I mentioned this nagging issue, this was what happened:
 
When waking a dual-display Mac from sleep which had parts or the whole of the Studio on the secondary monitor, said panels were moved to the primary monitor, as a snapped-on block , in a similar location as they would appear on the secondary one (see screenshots “Designer” and “Photo”, below), which is conveniently located to the right of my main screen and only shifts the panels a bit from their default location. The only way to avoid this issue would be to quit Affinity Designer/Photo before putting the Mac to sleep, but at least if you forgot about that you could drag all of your panels to the secondary monitor.
 
[By the way, while I'm at it, another bug/undesirable behaviour that I detected back then and which still hasn't been fixed in 1.5.x or in these 1.6.x betas is that if you drag the panel group from the topmost panel and push it even one pixel above the lower edge of the menu bar – regardless of whether you are doing it on the main monitor or on the secondary one –, the whole panel group will start breaking apart and grouping panel tabs in undesirable combinations all by itself, which is a serious abuse of Fitt's Law (it should be applied in useful functionality like hot corners, menus and other UX interactions like maximising or snapping, not semi-random, uncontrollable interactions that feel more like bugs rather than features; in this case, dragging the panel group against or above the menu bar should obviously result in, well, absolutely nothing besides it stopping its movement along the y axis).]
 

 
 
 
Enter screwed-up scenario #2, under the 1.6.x betas:
 
Now, when you wake up the Mac from sleep, the panels will reappear on the right-hand side of the primary monitor, in a semi-snapped state (they are not actually snapped but spaced with 5 px gutters between them), and some of them even lose their width info (I like to expand the Glyphs panel, for instance, so it opens up as a large window covering almost the entire remaining space in the secondary monitor, but it reverts to its default, minimum width) which screws up my setup even further (see screenshots “Designer Beta” and “Photo Beta”, below). Whereas before, I could just drag the whole thing back to its rightful place, now I have to either piece them all back together from scratch, or force quite the apps so they purge their current, unsaved – and patently undesirable – preferences and revert to their earlier state (which, while already an option before, is something I'd rather avoid doing, especially if I have open documents).
 

 
 
 
To add insult to injury, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop CC do not even put the panels in the wrong monitor (they just shift them around a bit, but enough to render them unusable), and I managed to fix the issue by assigning an easy to remember keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Opt+hyphen) to the “Reset Workspace” command, which works a charm.
 
I know this is actually a macOS issue (because besides Adobe apps, iTunes and other apps will sometimes also forget where they are supposed to draw their windows and shift them around the secondary monitor or redraw them on the main one) but please, oh please, can't you try to make Affinity play nice[r] with multiple monitor setups, on the Mac at least? There are a lot, and I mean *a lot* of professional Mac users who run such setups… And if you can't make it put the panels in the right monitor automatically (because macOS and its APIs, or its lack thereof), can't you at least make the apps revert to their older 1.5.x behaviour or implement some sort of Workspace functionality, to give us more advanced customisation management options and compete head-to-head with Adobe?
 
[P.S.: I'll be sending Apple feedback on macOS and link to this topic thread; it's a damn shame that the OS which offers what is currently still the best multiple monitor support in the market can't get something as simple as this absolutely right and provide developers with the tools to do it as well].

Added 'Find in Layers Panel' menu item to the 'Layer' menu so that users can assign a shortcut to it for improved workflow.
 
Nice … 

I have a few items to report that occur when working in Separated Mode:
Transform panel - tabbing between the dimensions and position order still needs to be  adjusted (see previous post). In short, tab order currently goes from X > W >Y > H. It should go from X > Y > W > H.  Cmd ~ doesn't cycle through separate document windows as expected. Rather, nothing happens. If Merge All Windows is selected, making 1 window with tabs, then Cmd ~ works. This seems to happen in either Separated or normal mode. Artistic type is creating a layer outside of the selected Artboard. Specifically, in a file with multiple Artboards, selecting any object on an Artboard, then switching to the Artistic Text tool and clicking inside the same Artboard creates a new text layer outside the Artboard, i.e., the new text layer is at the same hierarchy level as all the other Artboards. This does not happen using Text Frame Tool. Instead the text frame is drawn within the Artboard at the same layer level as the last selected object, as expected.
 
Finally, a request, please add/move the Find in Layers option to the main menu system so I can add a keyboard shortcut to it. I know there is a preference for this behavior all the time; however in documents with hundreds of layers it's unwieldy. 
 
Thanks so much!
 

Symbols and constraints are great, but now there's a new contender for my favorite 1.5 feature. :D  Thanks so much for including this!

Ooops, was late answer this. Sorry MEB.  :mellow:  :o
 
The functionality has, er, cheekily sneaked in... you will find it in the next beta release tomorrow. :D You will need to turn it on in Preferences.

Thanks Affinity Folks for all of your hard work. I'm looking forward to the new version. But, I'm still hoping for one feature in particular. I'd love it if that when you select a layer on the artboard/document that it would display the same layer in the layers panel. So that means scroll to the right position and expand any groups to show me the layer I selected.
 
Sketch does this very well and it's such a time saver. Having to go and find a layer I'm working on slows work down. And if you don't want it to be the default behavior, perhaps adding it as a preference to make it the default? Any chance of this making into the 1.5 release? Thanks.
 
Note: the functionality exists in the context menu "Find in Layers Panel"... I just want it as the default behavior (or a way to make it the default behavior).

Thanks Matt! I'm just excited to know it's on the radar. I totally understand priorities, especially for all the new (and crazy complicated) features you're working.

Yes, this would be most helpful. I mentioned a similar request here. But it was right at the end of the previous beta and might be too late for consideration. Again the benefit is substantial and I'm surprised others aren't clamoring for it.
 
Please consider adding this as a feature.
 
Thanks.

Exactly. We are aware of the issue and we will fix it as soon as we can. The fact that it has not yet been implemented is not a reflection of how interested we are in doing the feature. Everything will get fixed as soon as we're able to get to it - hopefully it's not that far away now :)

Others actually are clamoring for it (myself included) and have posted similar requests. However, the developers can’t split themselves to work on everything at the same time; there are most likely more pressing issues than this one.

Yes, this would be most helpful. I mentioned a similar request here. But it was right at the end of the previous beta and might be too late for consideration. Again the benefit is substantial and I'm surprised others aren't clamoring for it.
 
Please consider adding this as a feature.
 
Thanks.