R C-R

I may have found a way to reproduce this issue. I am not sure if all the steps or prerequisites are necessary but this is what seems to trigger it:
 
1. Launch the Designer beta & open an existing 1.5 format document. (I have only tested with ones that were copies of the older format created using the warning notice when opening an older format document, but I don't know if that is a prerequisite.)
 
2. Make some changes in the document, do a save (optional?), & close it.
 
3. Create a new document. Add some objects to it. Close it without saving it. (This seems to be the critical step.)
 
4. Try to reopen the document from step 1. When I do this, I get the Open Recovery File? notification popup & regardless of which button I choose in that, I get the failed notification saying the file is already open in another app.
 
Examples of the popup notifications:

 
I would be very interested in hearing if anyone else can duplicate this behavior.

In the beta 9 release notes MattP said "Hopefully resolved file save/restore issues seen when starting from a 'recovery file.'"
 
I am still seeing what I think is that bug in the beta 10 release, but I cannot pin down exactly what triggers it. What I sometimes see is the 'file in use by another app' notice when I try to reopen an AD file when no other app has it open.
 
As best as I can tell, this occurs only if I make some change in the AD file & then close it with the 'Don't save changes' option. But that alone doesn't trigger the notice when I try to reopen the file -- there has to be some other step(s) between closing the file with unsaved changes & opening it again.
 
I know this is a bug & that no other app is using the file because simply quitting & restarting AD beta 10 eliminates the notice & I can reopen the file without problems.

No special permissions need to be set. See MEB's page here for info about which NIK (& other) plugins work with Affinity Photo (which currently is only available for OS X so there is no separate Windows version to be confused about).
 
MEB's post here explains how to set AP's plugin preferences for use with the NIK collection -- but note that the Plug-in Search Folders path will vary depending on if you have Photoshop installed or not.
 
This YouTube video explains how to run the installer & set up the AP preferences. It is for a slightly older version of AP but the important parts are the same.
 
EDIT: More stuff I forgot to mention:
 
• The NIK plugins are destructive so it is a good idea to duplicate the layer before using one of them.
• If you are still having problems getting them to work after checking out all of the above, please tell us if you have any version of Photoshop installed & if so, which one -- this makes a big difference in the install & setup procedure.
• Depending on if you create an extra install location, you may have installed standalone versions of each of the plugins -- these are apps that can you can run like any other app (independently of Affinity Photo or any other graphics app). This can be very useful if you want to apply any of the NIK plugin effects that don't work in AP.

No special permissions need to be set. See MEB's page here for info about which NIK (& other) plugins work with Affinity Photo (which currently is only available for OS X so there is no separate Windows version to be confused about).
 
MEB's post here explains how to set AP's plugin preferences for use with the NIK collection -- but note that the Plug-in Search Folders path will vary depending on if you have Photoshop installed or not.
 
This YouTube video explains how to run the installer & set up the AP preferences. It is for a slightly older version of AP but the important parts are the same.
 
EDIT: More stuff I forgot to mention:
 
• The NIK plugins are destructive so it is a good idea to duplicate the layer before using one of them.
• If you are still having problems getting them to work after checking out all of the above, please tell us if you have any version of Photoshop installed & if so, which one -- this makes a big difference in the install & setup procedure.
• Depending on if you create an extra install location, you may have installed standalone versions of each of the plugins -- these are apps that can you can run like any other app (independently of Affinity Photo or any other graphics app). This can be very useful if you want to apply any of the NIK plugin effects that don't work in AP.

The most current release is Affinity Designer Public Beta - 1.5.0.12 (Windows). It is the Windows counterpart to the Mac version of Affinity Designer. The Windows version of Affinity Photo is still in development & has not yet reached the beta stage.

Opens fine here, too.
 
However it is a tiny file, only 21.1 px x 14.8 px. Drew, have you tried "Zoom to fit" from the View menu? Is it possible you are just at some zoom level that makes it difficult to see it?

Found on the web, white text made more <ahem> impactful with Affinity Photo:

Found on the web, white text made more <ahem> impactful with Affinity Photo:

Have you tried converting the letters to curves & using boolean subtraction with a rectangle (or whatever) to "cut" them?

The tone is likely the Mac's warning beep that (among other things) you hear when you type an invalid keyboard command. That suggests that you may have accidentally removed the CMD J duplicate keyboard shortcut from Affinity's Keyboard Shortcuts preferences. For Affinity Photo, that will be in the Photo Persona > Layer section, near the bottom of the list. For Designer, it will be in the Draw Persona > Edit section, about ½ way down the list.

The Option/Alt key is used to temporarily ignore snapping of control handles & nodes, not just with the move tool but also for every other item in the UI with a snapping feature. There are more of them than you might think, including the pen & node tools, the parametric adjustments of the shape tools, the control points on the gradient & transparency tools, & so on. (It is also used to invoke drag-duplication with the Move tool, to click to remove handles with the node tool, & to subtract from the selection with the pixel select tools.)
 
This is consistent throughout the UI's of both Affinity apps. Changing this to the Command key for the Move tool would break this consistency & changing it everywhere would create conflicts where the Command key is already used for something else, for example to temporarily toggle to the Node tool when the Pen tool is in use.

Also, Affinity has some stroke styles which SVG does not support directly, and those have to be expanded to keep them looking the same. Examples include mitre joins, and inside/outside stroke alignment.

The tone is likely the Mac's warning beep that (among other things) you hear when you type an invalid keyboard command. That suggests that you may have accidentally removed the CMD J duplicate keyboard shortcut from Affinity's Keyboard Shortcuts preferences. For Affinity Photo, that will be in the Photo Persona > Layer section, near the bottom of the list. For Designer, it will be in the Draw Persona > Edit section, about ½ way down the list.

Opens fine here, too.
 
However it is a tiny file, only 21.1 px x 14.8 px. Drew, have you tried "Zoom to fit" from the View menu? Is it possible you are just at some zoom level that makes it difficult to see it?

It won't make any settings "sticky," but you can use the View Menu > Customize Toolbar item to add dedicated blur, burn, etc. tool buttons to the Toolbar so at least you won't have to use the multi tool fly-out button to select the ones you use the most.
 
You can also create dedicated keyboard shortcuts for various specific tools in addition to or instead of the ones that cycle through different tools.

You should have both the trial & retail versions of Affinity Photo in your Applications folder.
 
When you purchased the retail version it should have automatically been downloaded & installed, so there is no separate step for that or need for you to do anything to install it. To confirm this, you can open the Mac App Store app & click on the Purchased tab. You should see AP listed there with an "Open" button next to it. If it has a "Download" button instead, click on that to download & install it.
 
What most likely is happening is that the trial version is still set to open your AP documents, which is why you get the expired notice. The simplest solution is just to delete the trial version from your Applications folder. That way, the retail version will open any documents that previously opened with the trial.

Me too!

Hi Chaz,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
As Callum said this feature is currently only available in Affinity Photo (convert paths to selections and masks).
Here's a tip to work around the problem in Designer: draw your shape with the Pen Tool as usual, fill it with any colour and no stroke, then to "convert" it to a selection press and hold ⌘ (cmd) and click over the object's thumbnail in the Layers panel. Affinity will create a selection from the layer contents.

In the Mac Affinity apps you can use CMD + spacebar to zoom in & out with the mouse pointer but you have to press the spacebar first for this to work.
 
If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel you can set it to zoom the display in Preferences > Tools. This is really useful because with this enabled you can zoom at the same time you do other things with the mouse pointer.

I think you should be able to do what you want by changing the Fill Mode at the bottom of the Layers menu to "Winding (Non-Zero)" for each of the shapes.
 
However, while that works great for each shape, when they are combined (with the Add operation) the holes reappear, because the Fill Mode is set back to "Alternate (Even-Odd)" & greyed out so you can't change it.