imagineer

Thanks Aammppaa The release in the Layer Studio does exactly what I wanted. I agree, I'd prefer a keyboard shortcut for this, like in FH. As for layered selection - I was trying to do layered DE-selection, with the Shift key depressed the whole time. This simply does not work in AD. Often the quickest way I select a large quantity of elements is to do a drag select, then shift deselect what I don't need. This is my problem in AD.(and yes, of course I use layers to aid in path management - though in AD having 1000 layers makes this all but useless - it's FAR easier to identify individual paths on the drawing itself rather than in the layers studio.) Duplicate 3 identical circles over top of each other, select them all. Now try shift-deselecting them. I can't do it with any keyboard shortcuts listed so far. The reason I think this important is because for the complex artwork I routinely do, this is a 'bread and butter' capacity I absolutely need and use continually. Anyway, thanks for the 'release' heads up - that's one problem resolved!

Thanks bleduc! On question 2 - in Freehand, if you have say 3 circles, one on top of another, and they are all selected, you can "drill" down to them by simply multiple clicking and FH will switch them off in sequence. That doesn't work in AD - have tried the Ctrl or Command, AD selects the top, switches off the other lower layers and you cannot switch the top layer off. If your selection is of a large number of elements, and you are simply switching off the elements you don't want, you cannot release the shift key, the elements you don't want have to deselect without releasing the shift key or you lose a few minutes of selection time.I can't stress enough how important this FH ability is, because, at least in keyline view, it makes the most complex selection/deselection a breeze. This is the single most important reason I don't use Illustrator for complex work or work I need done quickly (apart from Adobe's toxic ecosystem). On question 3 - If you say have an object with 10 vertices(points), and you want to translate 6 of them, leaving 4 of them in their present position, can you do this without leaving the node tool? Or do you have to go into the move tool for the scale? If so, you lose the vertex selection and you can't do what's needed since vertices don't stay selected in the move tool. In other words, you need to be able to perform scaling, shear, mirroring - translation work in the node tool mode. The shear and rotate input boxes are greyed out in the node tool, but that's exactly when I most want them. Thanks for your quick help, and AD has given me the most hope I've had since Adobe squashed FH - AD clearly has some of FH's street smarts. ps. How do you retrieve things you've pasted inside something else? In FH that's command/shift/X - is there an AD equivalent? Have not been able to find this anywhere!

Cut content - he means, when you've pasted something inside, how the blazes do you get it out again? Have looked high and low for an answer to this.

I've finally had to break with Freehand (Illustrator is not a serious vector program, being bloatcode, and selection is semi-crippled)- I have 2 problems with Affinity Designer. 1./ I have a 36 page document I started in FH - I could control all the elements of this drawing with about 15 layers in FH, for example, I may want to switch off 1 type of text in all the documents - 1 click. In Affinity Designer every path automatically gets it's own layer. Most pages in this document have easily 1000 paths. That means in AD I now have to sift through 36,000 layers. This has to be done through a palette, which acts as a kind of keyhole through which these layers can be observed. Now, if I want to turn off the text on the pages, is there any other way than sifting through 38,000 layers? 2./ When I have two paths totally coincident, and I want to deselect both, (because there is a 60 paths object selected in front of them that I want to isolate) - shift deselecting the top path switches it off, then clicking again reselects it rather than deselecting the lower layer. If this is impossible, I will not be able to use Affinity Designer. 3./ I really miss being unable to scale selected vertices. (let alone choosing a scale percentage)