Signguy

Just found this video explaining the processes for anyone that has been reading this thread.
 

Thank you for your inquiry regarding Graphtec Studio and the Affinity Designer software.  Due to Adobe Illustrator's pervasiveness throughout the industry, our corporate office includes a plug-in for it.  For other software companies who wish to write drivers for Graphtec products, they may submit a request to our corporate office to receive a Software Development Kit.  The link is here:
http://www.graphteccorp.com/support/software/sdk/index.html

You may want to contact the Affinity software company to see if they are interested in developing drivers for Graphtec products and provide them with the link.  If they receive enough requests, they might be willing to write the drivers.

Best regards,

Neil Zdunkawicz
Graphtec America, Inc.
949-770-6010 
 
 
I may be the only one for now but here is my request for this to happen sometime in the near future.  I'd even be willing to donate to a kickstarter program if that would help.

This has been covered a couple of different times on this forum.
 
The easiest way is as follows:
 
1. Draw a circle using the circle shape and hold the shift key to constrain its proportions.  
2. Drag the circle to the top of your design in the 12 o'clock position.
3. Select the circle and duplicate it using either Copy/Past or Command J key combinations.
4. Drag the second circle to the 6 o'clock position while holding the shift key to keep it in perfect alignment.
5. Decide how many dots that you want your overall circle to contain.  Make sure it is an even number and divide it into 360.  (ex. 360 dots divided by 46 = 7.8260869565º of seperation)
7. Click on the center rotation spot in the transform window.
8. Select both upper and lower circle and hit CMD-J to duplicate them.
9. In the rotation box (transform window) enter the degree of separation that you came up with.
10. Continue to hit CMD-J until your circle fills up with the required number of duplicate shapes that you wanted.
 
 

This is something that Affinity Photo can do already.

Thanks David for the info.  Yes, they are printing onto vinyl.  
 
So what you are saying is that all modern vector editors can share vector shapes (i.e. eps, svg, pdf) but the effects that you can add to them are not sharable between applications without first being rasterized, correct?  (There is NO STANDARD to vector effects they are all proprietary)
 
If you created a graphic on a 12" x 22" artboard and you want to send that graphic to a print shop to be printed on a 12 foot by 22 foot mural, you only have a few options.
 
1. Design the graphic in the same software as the print shop so that the image can be easily scaled without it being rasterized (This option would necessitate the need to purchase an Adobe CC subscription).  Almost ALL print shops use Windows computers because their printers software is ONLY available on Windows.  And since they use Windows, they use Adobe Illustrator and will probably never use a Mac or Affinity Designer unless a version is made for Windows. (And even if there was a Windows version, how many professional print shops would ditch the ever popular Adobe format?)
 
2. Scale the image to the desired output size and then save the image to their preferred file format (this option would rasterize all special effects).  If your image is going to be scaled and rasterized, why would the print shop even need the file in a vector format?  You may as well send them a png of the graphic.
 
3. Not use any effects at all when using Affinity Designer. (This is not likely to happen)
 
The issue that I have is that when I send a file to the print shop to be printed, I now have to have first hand knowledge of each of the printers that they use.  Some of the Eco-solvent printers on the market can print anywhere from 800 dpi up to 1440 dpi.  The Latex printers can print up to 1200 dpi (maybe more).  Without knowing the make and model of the printers, I would never know exactly what I should be setting my rasterization dpi setting to.  Why wouldn't I want to utilize the maximum dpi that the printer supports?  This is precisely why they want the graphic file in vector format in the first place.  They can scale it and print it at the highest dpi that their current printers support. 
 
So, the next time my print shop wants me to send them a vector of my image, what dpi setting should I choose to get the best quality? (Yes, I need to know how to convert Chicken McNuggets into a soft drink)  Even if I choose the industry standard of pdf which is supposed to be a file format used to "present and exchange documents reliably, independent of software, hardware or operation system", vector shapes can be saved and be scaled within a pdf file, but any effects that you give those shapes will always be rasterized and will not scale without being "pixelated".
 
Long winded I know but this thread certainly leaves more questions than answers.

Thank you for your inquiry regarding Graphtec Studio and the Affinity Designer software.  Due to Adobe Illustrator's pervasiveness throughout the industry, our corporate office includes a plug-in for it.  For other software companies who wish to write drivers for Graphtec products, they may submit a request to our corporate office to receive a Software Development Kit.  The link is here:
http://www.graphteccorp.com/support/software/sdk/index.html

You may want to contact the Affinity software company to see if they are interested in developing drivers for Graphtec products and provide them with the link.  If they receive enough requests, they might be willing to write the drivers.

Best regards,

Neil Zdunkawicz
Graphtec America, Inc.
949-770-6010 
 
 
I may be the only one for now but here is my request for this to happen sometime in the near future.  I'd even be willing to donate to a kickstarter program if that would help.

No need to manifest your stupidity so quickly.
Mac and Windows users coexist here incredibly well.
Enjoy using Affinity Photo for Windows. 

Why don't you create words that get duplicated into symbols.  Change them once and your done.  I can see this working exceptionally well for your floorpans and also for the avery labels.

OK, if you need this "pronto", the Affinity team will not sleep, until it is  built in! Perhaps they will fire the team members, who weren’t aware of this gigantic gap!
Strange people around …

It seems layers were sometimes getting optimised out. This will be fixed in a beta soon.

MikeW is correct, Divide does work.  One other thing that I do is after I divide the object, I switch over to Outline view mode ⌘Y (It really helps to be able to see the edges of your objects).  I then select the outer most edge, press shift and select the next edge closest to the outer and hit the Subtract Operation as MikeW suggested.  You can then keep repeating this process for the next inner shape.  
Divide Objects.mov

Well here's something interesting.... seems we've lost some functionality.
 
I was going to post with "huh??????"
But I've answered my own question. Divide does indeed work (kinda)..... on the HTML svg too BTW. (you have to do one subtract after).
 
BUT only in the MAS version.... all Boolean options are grayed out in, at least, the last two "more stable" and "use these instead of MAS" Beta versions. Devs.... are you aware of this?
At the very least, it would imply that Divide is being tinkered with on the back end.... which is fantastic.
 
(in the Betas, I put a rectangle behind everything and did a divide to reconstitute the separate shapes)

Joey,
The Serif team doesn't like to give time frames because of unexpected issues when they add new features. Your just going to have to wait like the rest of us for that much need feature.
 
There was a lot of work getting art boards to work properly in this lastest update. I would imagine that as soon as they find that everything is stable and the little bugs and crashes have subsided we will start seeing more "new" features being added again.
I'm not sure if this helps but you can open your AD file in AP and use the warp tool there and then apply the change. Then you can reopen the document back into AD. This is all pretty easy to do using the file menu.

I can confirm this.  This behavior did not occur in v1.4.2.

The export failure should be fixed in the next beta, hopefully later today.

Would it be possible to allow a layer to be copied and pasted within another layer.  You can drag layers within another layer but currently you can not copy and past a layer within a layer.  I thought previous versions allowed for this?
 
For example, I would like to be working on a document with multiple layers, open up another document or even a vector graphic that also has layers, copy the layer that I want and paste it into my original document after clicking on the layer that I want it pasted into.  Currently, the program will just create a new layer.
 
Maybe it already allows for this and I'm missing something?
 
Sorry,  I just discovered that there is a paste inside option ( ⌥⌘V ) that allows me to do that.  I may have to set that up as my default behavior using the shortcut keys.  Then again, maybe not!

Just to set straight what was said above: Nobody has access to the sales information apart from Apple themselves - they will never pass the information to any developer, no matter who they are. We have absolutely no way to verify that you have bought a copy of Affinity Designer/Photo apart from looking at the embedded receipt in your application on your Mac. If we do that, we could theoretically unlock a Windows license... but if we did that, it only works one way - if you buy the Windows version we can't give people a free download from the App Store - there is no facility for this.
 
[Edited to clarify: The receipt in your Mac App Store application simply validates that you have indeed purchased it, but it will not reveal any details that could be used to identify you]
 
You can argue as much as you like about whether the product is worth $50 or not (we think it's worth more than that, that's why we set it at a very reasonable $50 as we thought we were being really fair and people would be happy). Other programs may offer less, more or just generally different things, some are single-platform, some are multi-platform, but none of them offers the same level of software for the money in my opinion.
 
I think we've been pretty clear about the fact that it's not technically possible to offer anything apart from a one-way licensing scheme that would require everyone to always buy it on the Mac App Store first and then we give them a free Windows-download. That's not particularly realistic or fair, so we're just saying 'Buy it on each OS you want to use it on'. Not too much underhanded or deceptive behaviour going on in my opinion? :S
 
If the future brings a Mac version that isn't sold solely through the App Store then it's valid to revisit this discussion, but that isn't on our roadmap right now, at least not that I'm aware of...
 
Thanks,
Matt

AP and AD are already too cheep.

This is a rich and most welcome beta, but please, please, for the love of Mary, can we have rulers whose origin can be arbitrarily set.  This is a long standing request and if it is an insurmountable challenge, may we at least be told. Or, am I missing something?

You won't catch me running any Windows OS. I value my Time, Security, and Sanity too much! LOL

You won't catch me running any Windows OS. I value my Time, Security, and Sanity too much! LOL

You won't catch me running any Windows OS. I value my Time, Security, and Sanity too much! LOL

Hey all,
 
So sort of two different topics here right. 
1) place an (odd) number of circles evenly around in a circle.
2) evenly distribute objects along a path that's not so friendly. Could be a spiral, free-form curve.... whatever.
 
A more robust distribute toolset, which we obviously need (and I believe is in the works?), could of course address both issues in one tool.
 
But for now....
 
1) I have a different option other than CMD-J worth mentioning (imho). CMD J is very powerful, but for a large number of objects it can get a bit.... tedious. Even if you're CMD-Jing just a few elements, grouping, doing another transform, CMD-Jing, grouping etc....
This method takes about a minute (if I'm not talking trying to describe what I'm doing  ;)) .
And that's a minute if you're doing 9 objects or 999 objects.
Video (sorry about the clickety-clack... I come down hard on my keys).
 
2) That's a tougher one. Could be done.... but very labour intensive, and relying a little too much on eyeballing etc.
I would use the tape measure concept discussed in an earlier thread (can't find it at the moment) to place nodes and divide the path in order to snap objects to end points. Like I said, PITA.
EDIT (smacks forehead): Of course ;)  you can just use a copy of the curve as a Text path and use a bullet character (circle, square, or something more ornate) tabbed at even distances (or just use letter spacing). Then convert to curves. 
If you know how to make your own font it could be anything  :) .
 
 

Here's a video showing an easy and precise way to do it. I've placed 67 circles around a circle in this example but you can use whatever number you want.
Place the expression (360/67) in the Rotation input field in the Transform panel to ensure you get a precise result (not the value in degrees).

Actually, I was playing around with this again.  If you want an odd number, just divide the number into 360 like the above option.  So 360/45= 8º of separation.  Follow the same procedures as above but change the color of the bottom circle that you put in the 6 o'clock position (This will help you to identify it later).  Enter your rotation into the rotation box and duplicate it all the way around the circle (not just half way like before).  Now just delete the offending circles that you changed the color on and you should now have your evenly spaced and odd numbered circles in a circular pattern.