GregTH9457

That's an even better example for the need of a lasso tool! I truly hope the developers of Designer can incorporate a lasso into their near-term project plans. Thanks, Greg

Thanks for your reply Ioukash. Unfortunately, the chemical drawing was brought over as an EMF file from a specialized chemical drawing software program. As it was brought into Designer, it is grouped as one object. Ungrouping everything results in each vector line and text object being a separate item in the illustration. As far as layers are concerned, Affinity brought each of these vectors and text objects in as a different layer. I didn't count all the layers, but I'm fairly certain there is over 100 in total. This is not a simple solution but probably much more complicated. A lasso is designed to make complex selections simple. If a lasso was not needed for vector illustrations, Adobe and Corel would have eliminated this tool many years ago. However, it has been a part of Illustrator and CorelDraw probably for over 25 years and their users make use of it all the time. It is my standard go-to selection tool. I'm just trying to suggest something that would make Designer much better and more competitive with Illustrator and CorelDraw. I am certain other customers would appreciate it, too. Best, Greg

Hello Ioukash, The attached Designer file is a simple case in which three complex chemical structures containing many vector paths, and which are intermixed with text objects, becomes difficult to edit due to the lack of the lasso tool. With the so-called "node-in-lasso-mode tool", you can select all the vector paths and manipulate the nodes, but you can do nothing with the text. Therefore, this does nothing for me. With the Move tool, you can only draw a rectangular selection box around any one of the structures, but the crude nature of its selection capabilities only allows selection of one of the structures along with major parts of the other structure(s). In order to isolate a single structure selection, you have to use the coarse selection of the rectangular selector and then press the Shift key while deselecting the numerous parts you don't want selected one at a time. In addition, since the rectangular selection tool doesn't highlight each selected vector line with selection marks, it becomes even more difficult to know when you've deselected a single vector line (only the text gets highlighted to show what's been selected and needs to be deselected). This is just one case of many similar vector designs that I have drawn which demonstrates the need for a lasso tool to better select and manipulate complex objects. I don't believe that a lasso tool, which is so popular in the major vector drawing apps, is suddenly not needed, because Affinity has so many other workflows. If I have missed a workflow or a special tool that can do the job in Designer, please let me know what I should be doing to make it simpler to use. Note: For you chemists out there, these are nonsense structures made only to illustrate a point. Thanks, Greg Three chemical structures.afdesign

Thanks for the quick response, Callum! I'm aware of the lasso tools that work with raster graphics, which I often use in Affinity Photo. However, what I am suggesting is a lasso tool to select and manipulate vector drawings. This is missing from Designer and Publisher, but the major competitors in this space have this tool available and it is sorely needed in the Affinity Suite. If Affinity added a lasso tool for vector drawings, the suite would become highly competitive with Adobe and Corel. Anyone coming from those platforms that has done a lot of vector design will immediately notice the lack of a lasso tool. Best, Greg

The major deficiency of the Affinity V2 Suite is the lack of a lasso selection tool in Designer and Publisher. The rectangle selection tool does not provide enough control over the selection process to accurately select objects in a complex, closely spaced, vector drawing. In addition, while the node tool provides for a lasso selection of already selected nodes, it does nothing to help select and move other objects, such as text. My designs are often very complex with closely spaced objects that can't be selected with a rectangular section tool. Both Illustrator and CorelDraw have lasso selection tools, because the free-form selection of objects is essential for manipulating critical vector drawings. Although I have purchased v2 of the Affinity Suite, I will continue to use CorelDraw for all of my vector drawing needs because of this deficiency. I hope to see a lasso selection tool in a upcoming v2 update, which will make the Affinity Designer more usable and competitive for creating vector graphics. Best, Greg

☹️ So sad to hear that... Please, Affinity development team, give us a lasso selection tool for vector graphics!

Thank you for your quick response! In Affinity Designer for Windows, the node tool allows for the selection of an object by clicking and dragging a rectangular marquee to select nodes (or parts of objects). If, after at least one node or object is selected, the Alt key is then pressed (shift + Alt does the same thing) and the node tool is then clicked and dragged, then the rectangular marquee acts as a lasso for the apparent selection of additional objects. However, while the behavior of this lasso is like a free-form selection tool, it actually selects nothing in addition to what has already been selected. So yes, a lasso tool appears after one object is pre-selected, but it has no function other than to select certain nodes in the already selected object. What I need is to select objects, not nodes. Again, I ask if anyone knows if Designer has a true lasso section tool? I sure hope I've missed a well-hidden feature that is sorely needed!

The lack of a lasso tool for selecting vector graphics is a huge deficiency in Designer (v1 or v2). The programmers for Inkscape also decided that a lasso tool was unnecessary. This is the main reason why Designer (and Inkscape) can't compete with Illustrator or CorelDraw. For the type of complex vector graphics I design, a rectangle selector is not accurate enough for selecting fine parts of a drawing or illustration. Someone at Affinity needs to listen to their customers and maybe someday they will really be able to compete with the best vector graphics programs. I'm hoping that this deficiency can be corrected in a coming update to v2 of Designer, and then I can finally retire my rather old CorelDraw app. I did purchase the v2 suite of Affinity programs even knowing that Designer would be mostly unusable to me.