hujikoda

I work on a project now where there ie so many files to be created (about fifty) and the have to be in the right order.
To do so, my artboards are divided in 4 categories : A B C & D hence my artboards renamed A1 A2 A3.. B1 B2 B3 etc.....
Therefore I spend a lot of time renaming artborad. Is there any way to bach-rename? Or at least edit the convention 'Artboard {n}'?
On windows you can press F2 to rename (cannot find a way to set up short cut for renaming in affinity). So if you select 50files and you press F2 you type "NEW NAME" and all the files will automatically be renamed NEW NAME (n). Would be nice to be able to do the same thing with artboard.
At least when I'm renaming a artboard (or layer or any object), it would be nice to be able to rename the next one by pressing tab.

Agreed on that

Nobody ever needed something similar? Lately I've been creating some animations (exporting up to hundred files, I'm actually limited as after that it become a pain to get around with the different layout) and I really had a hard time when I wanted to add a new artboard in the middle and keep continuity in the order of my exported files. I had three solutions:
- create a new "artboard 97" and then transfer the content of each board to the next one such as artboard(n) to artboard(n+1) in order to add me new content in "artboard 53"
- at the end of the project selecting and grouping all the contents on by one and then creat slices from these groups which will be numbered on the order of their position.
- otherwise, rename my artboard one by one with numbers
In any case, any of this solution is very laborious and that is why I would really like the be able the rename artboard or object by batch. Or at least when renaming an object, being able to rename the following one by pressing tab would already be amazing (as it works in windows explorer, sorry, not familiar with the finder of MAC OS). I put it in bold cause this simple thing would really save me time on all my project as I always spend so much time renaming objects.

thanks imfastrnu2
 
That's true, but here at work most of my export have to be in PNG so this feature would be most appreciated.
It's really annoying having to create a new artboard cause it implies at least renaming and reorganizing...
At least the artboard should be able to stick to the object when the resize it. The same way that objects can actually stick to the artboard when you resize them.

Just for fun, here's a version that does it with just a single text frame.

Screen Recording 2020-02-20 at 09.55.38.mov The frame has a blue background, the text has a white background, and there are four decorations: two for the red bars, two for the white areas that extend beyond them. I haven't got the spacing perfect by a long way...
 
Extended header.afpub

My blue rectangle is a separate shape below the text frame. 

The blue rectangle is a decoration on the paragraph. The white rectangle, which 'overlays' the blue rectangle, is another decoration.

Is this the sort of thing you want?
2020-02-20 08-21-37.mp4

Hi @hujikoda!
Is this what you want:

Screen Recording 2020-02-20 at 08.42.54.mov  
If so, I've attached a Publisher document. The font is Arial Black. Text is right-aligned with a white background. The small red rectangles are letter I in the same font, in the same text frame. The text frame stretches across the full width of the blue bar but the white area only extends to the width of the text. 
Hope this helps!
H
 
 
 
Stretching header.afpub

Let's hope so!! 

I think it would be a good feature too.
If you have Affinity Photo as well as Affinity Designer, you may be able to do something with Macros for the time being, but it will be a rather clunky solution.  By clunky, I mean you would have to manually record the renaming of Artboard 1, select next Artboard up, rename Artboard 2, select next Artboard up, etc. Then once it has been recorded you could save the macro and play it back on other documents. However, even then, it still won't be ideal because it'll be quite literal.  I.E.
1. The names you record in the macro will be the names the artboards will be.  Therefore, if you wanted to change the naming scheme from '001' to 'Page 001' you would need to record another macro from scratch
2. If you recorded the renaming of say 50 artboards, when you play it back on a document with only 5 artboards, the last artboard (top artboard) would need to be manually renamed as the name will be wrong (see below screenshot)
3. If you recorded the renaming of say 50 artboards, when you play it back on a document with 55 artboards, the last 5 won't be renamed
In case you do have Affinity Photo as well, I have attached an example macro that you can experiment with.  However I predominantly deal with photos, therefore I'm not sure how well the macro will work with a real-world project in Affinity Designer.  Therefore, try it out on a copy of a document—not an original document—so if it doesn't work as expected you will still have the original document intact.
To import the Macro into Affinity Photo, go to the Library Panel (not Macro Panel), click on the icon with the horizontal lines in the top-right and go to 'Import Macros'.
Affinity Photo Macro File (3KB):
Renaming Macros.afmacros

 
As you mentioned animation, whilst experimenting with the above I think it would also be good to be able to reverse the layer/artboard export order in the Export Persona too.
At the moment, if you export five artboards/layers, Artboard 005 (the top artboard in the layers panel) is exported first and Artboard 001 (the bottom artboard in the layers panel) is exported last.  This means the file timestamps are in the wrong order.  If the exported images are organised by file name it isn't such an issue, however if organised by date they are backwards.  I'm not sure why it's like this, as exporting to PDF exports correctly (I.E. The bottom artboard is page 1).



 

According to my use of the renaming function in my file manager (outside of Affinity) I need this all the time. I can think of many situations this would come in handy in AD, too. Still, I think this is a rather exotic feature in comparison to many other 'much needed' features that are already on the roadmap.
So, I do support this feature request but I do have not high expectations to see this in the near future.
d.

You have understood what I mean, but in my situation I have to uncheck 150x3=450 output files if I need to export only one artboard, so a select/deselect all slices button could help; an Export selected slices could be better.

Thanks for the answers. A lockable guide layer or layers would be cool. But mostly, the ability to make them stay put. I keep dragging them accidentally, and it's kind of annoying. 

Hi hujikoda,
Select the group layer in the Layers panel then go to menu File ▸ Export... and select Selection with (or without) background from the Area dropdown.
Alternatively create a slice from that group (in the Layers panel in Export Persona) and export as PNG from there. There's no need to create artboards just for export.

Have you seen the bottom suggestion: Alternatively create a slice from that group (in the Layers panel in Export Persona) and export as PNG from there. There's no need to create artboards just for export. Isn't it working for you correctly? 
If your logo is tightly placed on the artboard (no extra space around it) and exporting the artboard using File ▸ Export or the Export Persona doesn't work (adds empty space) can you please upload  the file using this link for us to take a look? All files will be deleted after being checked. Thanks.
Note there's a known bug when creating artboards from selections that prevents the artboard from being tightly created as it should. This is being looked into.

Thank you so much man, this is cool !!!!
Sorry I took time to reply but I am thankful

You can create Artboard Assets by dragging them to the Assets Panel; to show the Assets Panel go to (View > Studio > Assets), on Mac you can just drag and drop them, I don't think Windows users can do this, so, if you are a Windows user you will need to use the Burger Menu  and choose Add From Selection.
Tip: Add a rectangle the size of the Artboard to see the Artboard in the Assets Panel otherwise it will not show, you can always hide or delete the rectangle as you place an Asset in the workspace.

Hi MEB,
 
thanks for your solution, it works fine. But last night I figured out how to do it - so I have to say that the current crop function is not even bad: If I want to cut a picture I just go to the point reduce - voilà! As simple as that. :) And than I can easy add empty space at the picture.
 
A checkbox to make the crop destructive as a matter of fact would be useful but so it's not really bad how I thought before. I'm looking forward to the progress of Affinity software!
 
 
@Fixx:
 
Ok, but what if I already have a cropped picture? And the problem is solved as you can read now. Thanks.
 
 
@DavidMac:
 
Your pictures are fascinating! Really interesting. I like this kind of art.

You guys are nice but scary... haha

Welcome back, Guillaume!
Affinity Designer Help (FR): Symboles

Do you want to ROTATE guides, or do you want FREEFORM guides? If there would be "Convert to Guides" command for lines/curves it would cover this case.