Gear maker

Wow!  Great job Affinity.  Still a lot much more to try but the Node tool Transform is great.  Love being able to manipulate multiple nodes like that.  So far I really like the Isometric panel.  My first thoughts are that the Layers panel should have some indicator that shows which isometric view was used to create the layer.  Like "curve top" or even "curve t".  Or, maybe have the isometric panel show it.
 
You are right Peter, I would much rather they had held onto this release until the Affinity people had addressed all the requests and complaints they have collected over the last 4 years.  Then when they released it 10 years from now we would all be so happy.  At least the dozen people still using AD would be so happy, the rest of us would probably be gone.  I don't know why anyone would figure the roadmap needs to be completed before version 1.7 was released.  The roadmap contains things Affinity has said would be done before moving on to version 2.  I for one am not disappointed so far and I am still opening presents.
 

Wow!  Great job Affinity.  Still a lot much more to try but the Node tool Transform is great.  Love being able to manipulate multiple nodes like that.  So far I really like the Isometric panel.  My first thoughts are that the Layers panel should have some indicator that shows which isometric view was used to create the layer.  Like "curve top" or even "curve t".  Or, maybe have the isometric panel show it.
 
You are right Peter, I would much rather they had held onto this release until the Affinity people had addressed all the requests and complaints they have collected over the last 4 years.  Then when they released it 10 years from now we would all be so happy.  At least the dozen people still using AD would be so happy, the rest of us would probably be gone.  I don't know why anyone would figure the roadmap needs to be completed before version 1.7 was released.  The roadmap contains things Affinity has said would be done before moving on to version 2.  I for one am not disappointed so far and I am still opening presents.
 

Wow!  Great job Affinity.  Still a lot much more to try but the Node tool Transform is great.  Love being able to manipulate multiple nodes like that.  So far I really like the Isometric panel.  My first thoughts are that the Layers panel should have some indicator that shows which isometric view was used to create the layer.  Like "curve top" or even "curve t".  Or, maybe have the isometric panel show it.
 
You are right Peter, I would much rather they had held onto this release until the Affinity people had addressed all the requests and complaints they have collected over the last 4 years.  Then when they released it 10 years from now we would all be so happy.  At least the dozen people still using AD would be so happy, the rest of us would probably be gone.  I don't know why anyone would figure the roadmap needs to be completed before version 1.7 was released.  The roadmap contains things Affinity has said would be done before moving on to version 2.  I for one am not disappointed so far and I am still opening presents.
 

Wow!  Great job Affinity.  Still a lot much more to try but the Node tool Transform is great.  Love being able to manipulate multiple nodes like that.  So far I really like the Isometric panel.  My first thoughts are that the Layers panel should have some indicator that shows which isometric view was used to create the layer.  Like "curve top" or even "curve t".  Or, maybe have the isometric panel show it.
 
You are right Peter, I would much rather they had held onto this release until the Affinity people had addressed all the requests and complaints they have collected over the last 4 years.  Then when they released it 10 years from now we would all be so happy.  At least the dozen people still using AD would be so happy, the rest of us would probably be gone.  I don't know why anyone would figure the roadmap needs to be completed before version 1.7 was released.  The roadmap contains things Affinity has said would be done before moving on to version 2.  I for one am not disappointed so far and I am still opening presents.
 

Wow!  Great job Affinity.  Still a lot much more to try but the Node tool Transform is great.  Love being able to manipulate multiple nodes like that.  So far I really like the Isometric panel.  My first thoughts are that the Layers panel should have some indicator that shows which isometric view was used to create the layer.  Like "curve top" or even "curve t".  Or, maybe have the isometric panel show it.
 
You are right Peter, I would much rather they had held onto this release until the Affinity people had addressed all the requests and complaints they have collected over the last 4 years.  Then when they released it 10 years from now we would all be so happy.  At least the dozen people still using AD would be so happy, the rest of us would probably be gone.  I don't know why anyone would figure the roadmap needs to be completed before version 1.7 was released.  The roadmap contains things Affinity has said would be done before moving on to version 2.  I for one am not disappointed so far and I am still opening presents.
 

You can also double click just outside the corner handles to do the same thing.

These cheat sheets are great, but very limited.  How would I know from these that (using Designer on a mac for example):
shift + cmd + [  will move the selected layer to the bottom of the group
opt + cmd + [  will change the selected layer to the next layer in the group 
or
opt + cmd R  will switch to the Draw Persona
opt + cmd E  will switch to the Export Persona
opt + cmd P  will switch to the Pixel Persona
or
opt + clicking  on a handle would delete the handle
or
ctrl + drag  on the corner of a bounding box will rotate the box around the opposite corner
or
etc. etc. etc.
The cheat sheet doesn't address modifiers other than cmd.  Or using multiple modifiers.  Or modifiers used with a click or drag of the mouse.  Though some of those have been added to the MODIFIERS & LAYER CONTROL portion of the cheat sheet.
I find the list in the Help > Workspace > Keyboard shortcuts to be a much more comprehensive list and it is searchable.

Last year I had a need to be able to put a semi-random "noise" in an AD drawing.  The noise option in AD didn't give me quite the control I needed.  I wanted to be able to control the color of the noise.  So I created a font that I could use to type gibberish, set the color (even the background), scale, rotate, overlap, transparency, etc.
 
The one big drawback to this is that when I zoom in the dots become obvious, not like the noise offered by AD.
 
Just in case you have such a need attached is the font.  Okay the forum won't let me load a .ttf file so I have zipped it.
 
FYI I recommend you don't convert to curves these text layers.  It tends to makes the file humongous instantly.  No advantage to doing so anyway.  <_<
 

 
Texture1.ttf.zip

From my experience I have found the search field searches in the name of the letter.  So searching for an A will return most everything as a name like LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z has an A in it  But a search for CAPITAL LETTER A will find the all the varieties of capitol A's.  Also a search can be done using the unicode seeing as that's also in the name.  But I get some weird results on that.  A search for an 09 gives the unicode f909 and fa09 but not all the other possibilities.  Typing in a u+0045 shows all characters but highlights the E.  But a u+004 just shows all characters.

@jwelch111 try rotating the circle 45°.Then you can use the side anchor point to snap to the curve (constrained from center of course)(snap to geometry ticked in panel).

The best way to achieve a shiny surface IMHO is with a conical gradient using a mix of lighter and darker bands against a silver background.

I knocked up this, the braid could do with being thinner I think, so it looks more dense.

Braid.afbrushes I squished the braid down a bit, the rounded cable look was done by applying a 3D fx on the curve.

There is a slight glitch if you look close enough but I'm totally ignoring that lol!
To get that wired look I used these settings on all of the shapes, I could do better with more time but I have to go to work else I'd do something a bit different.

Bert, I agree it is something that is lacking.  Especially when you have text so you need to reach the lower right handle. 
When I'm working on a large drawing I frequently create a New View of my drawing.  In one view I have it zoomed into the detail area and the other is zoomed out or moved to allow use of the handles.

Sounds like Layer>Expand Stroke is what you need.  You probably want to use a square caps on the ends of your initial stroke so there are only 4 nodes.

The OP hasn’t told us whether or not this kitten is a tabby.

On the Mac it's listed as Assistant Options, and yes it needs to be scrolled down to get to it.
 

I only can think of 2 other ways and they depend on your drawing.
If the background is a solid color then use that color to fill the shapes.
If the background is not solid make a copy of the background a child of each shape.  As long as you Lock children you can still move the shape without causing a problem.

I only can think of 2 other ways and they depend on your drawing.
If the background is a solid color then use that color to fill the shapes.
If the background is not solid make a copy of the background a child of each shape.  As long as you Lock children you can still move the shape without causing a problem.

I only can think of 2 other ways and they depend on your drawing.
If the background is a solid color then use that color to fill the shapes.
If the background is not solid make a copy of the background a child of each shape.  As long as you Lock children you can still move the shape without causing a problem.

Regardless of individual perception of this "feature", it remains confusing, jarring and frustrating for many page layout software users.
My analogy (which I've explained before  https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/56697-type-tool-to-move-tool-hotkey/&do=findComment&comment=289576 ) ...
goes something like: If I'm working at my desk, and I reach for my pencil (use hotkey), should I have to look closely to make sure that my pencil is in my hand, and not my pen or scissors? No.
In my mind, hotkeys primary purpose is speed. You reduce the speed by requiring me to keep track of which tool is chosen by a single hotkey.

Yep. I believe the betas exist for refining and bug fixing, so I'm pretty confident there will be room for improvement. I'm just reminding the nice guys at Serif (again) that they first need to get their current features working before they implement new ones. There is a overwhelming amount of known bugs, serious flaws and performance problems in 1.6. Some of them were even introduced quite recently and are still not fixed to date.

That’s very odd! Any time I’ve tried to perform geometry operations with unclosed curves in either of the Affinity apps, the app has automatically closed the curves for me.
 
 
It would be helpful if the labels in the Layers panel distinguished between closed and unclosed curves.

Personally I'd rather Serif spent their time improving the software, rather than worrying about the design of the splash screen!

Hi Steve55,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
This is a side-effect of the way the rasterisation routine works. These "lines" are the result of the background colour bleeding through the edges of the shapes. See this post by Matt P (one of the developers) and the rest of the thread to learn more about this.
 
If you place a shape with a similar colour to the ones on the front on the bottom of the layers stack (so below them) you should be able to disguise these lines a little better. Adding a thin stroke with the same colour as the fill to the shapes may also be an alternative in some cases (when applicable). Other alternative is to duplicate them all then rasterise the duplicated layer that contains them to generate an image based on the colours of the vector shapes. Blur the image a little with a Gaussian Blur FX and place it below the objects to again disguise the "lines".

You can use search engines like Google for that purpose. Suppose you want to know about glyph kerning. Then type
 
kerning site:affinity.help/designer
 
in the Google search field. Using site: … will get you results only from the Affinity Designer Help pages, and these are indexed by Google already. If you want more privacy, go to https://startpage.com and use the same search words there. You can also add the Startpage plugin to your browser.
 
Hope that helps … 
Alex