dkibui

Hey rawalanche,
You know I discovered the press down Control+Spacebar and drag feature by accident in Affinity Designer, (It only works using Control to the right of the space bar in my case, maybe it's a bug!). This feature is so useful because I just hold the spacebar to pan and add Control to zoom in and out, I can't imagine not having it.
 
That being said, I have also found Snapping while smooth zoom noticeably annoying. I wish there was a toggle to enable or disable it (would be nice if both Control keys worked). I have a friend who loves it, I just don't get her but well. Anyway I have been forced to work in higher zoom level than normal just to avoid the nuance. I second you in this request. 
 
 

I don't think you are asking too much. It is a valid suggestion and we will see if the Affinity team will make something out of it. Just don't expect to see it next week 
 
I am sure we will see an enhanced layer concept. I mentioned above the discussion about 'global layers' and these are related to your idea, too. I could imagine a simple option in the spread setup like 'create folder per page' would work (I wouldn't call them artboards because there needs to be a distinction from artboards in AD). OTOH we have to keep in mind that eventually we will see spreads with multiple pages 
Cheers,
d.

Not if you first create two (or three) folder layers that are called left page and right page (plus spread) and use them accordingly 
To be clear, I am not against your suggestion of some more automatic assistance from the software itself. I think your example of the artboards in AD illustrates the idea very well. But I assume to make this work really well for all kinds of situations this has to be thought out very well.
What I stumbled across is your claim that the layers are chaotic per se (no offense, just a comment). There are tools to work in a less chaotic way if one wishes to. It's just a manual way at the moment. But working neat and with a plan always takes longer at first. In a workshop, in a kitchen, in art 
Cheers,
d.

Thanks Murfee for the suggestion. That works like a charm but as on my reply to Pebowski the idea is for the software do this automatically for you. You would be surprised how much time it takes to manually organise these layers if you have a document with considerable number of pages.

Yes that works, thanks - TBH I'd been wondering what that 'new layer' command was for, given that each element you draw or place creates its own layer automatically.
'New Layer from selection' would be a useful command - also agree with @dkibui though - automatically splitting pages in layers panel would be best.

One thing I really love about Designer Artboards is how content is grouped into "Artboard1", "Artboard2" and so on. The outcome of this arrangement is you end up with really clean layers that makes it easy to understand what you have "going on" on your canvas. Sadly that's not the case in Publisher when you have facing pages. Anything and everything on the left and right pages goes anywhere on the layers panel and the outcome is lots of chaos in your layers. I suggest implementing the same technique used in designer so that anything created on the left page is automatically grouped under "Left Page" and "Right Page" for content created on the right page.
I have 2 simple pages to illustrate

I think the Edit Wrap Outline button in the Toolbar does what you want.
Just select the image and move the bottom nodes up

Makes perfect sense. I will observe this next time around

The files are hosted with Amazon, so they should download as quick as your ISP can handle.

Hey Meb, safoster71,
 
The ability to align points for me is so crucial as a logo designer and without it I might have to change my approach to logo design and I am not sure I can.
 
@MEB I have tried the suggestion you have given above but it only seems to align points to points on other objects, in AI, I can select any number of points on any number of objects and align them to the left, right, top, bottom or even centre. If I select 2 points and align them to the left, the point on the right moves to the same x axis position as the one on the left and so on.
When using strokes, you can generate rather sophisticated drafts very fast, with amazing results! I honestly hope this is a feature that can be added, I have already invested in Affinity designer, I am really hoping to stay here

The font seems to improve a lot after Windows' ClearType. The shapes on the other hand remains pixilated anyway if it a known issue I am confident the problem will be resolved before final release.

Sounds good. Once you're comfortable, make sure you take advantage of the "Share your Work" section.

Hehe, you are an expert in AD, you know your stuff. I on the other hand I'm a newbie, a progressive newbie perhaps.
 
Again it was nice learning the workaround, it will come in handy for non complex vectors like exporting logos for 3D animation but for complex vectors like maps, I will still need to use Ai. This workaround is just not applicable for shapes with hundreds of thousands of nodes because you have to correct intersections manually.
 
Newbie today, expert tomorrow. I have every intention of becoming an expert AD user. Fingers crossed

I apologise not reading this topic as I have a short deadline but there MUST be an option to cancel Union boolean operation.

I support this request since boolean operations are a pretty crucial piece in vector design, and I'll be honest, I was unaware of the limitations until this topic. As you said, Designer is still a newer program, but I will say from my own experience, it is great for achieving a lot of tasks whereas I feel Illustrator just cannot pull them off. Seeing the way progress moves on this forum, I guarantee such a task will be addressed within time.

C :) :) L

Thanks A_B_C for the links. They are an eye opener. It concerns me that these are known issues going back to 2014/2015. If this AD roadmap link is anything to go by, these features are not even in the pipeline! I am wishing the developers all the very best because I am rooting for Affinity/Serif. I will continue to use AD and just keep learning in the meantime.
 
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10410-common-feature-requests-index/

Thank you. I will try to change my workflow a bit. Let´s see if it helps. :-)

It is there already.
Go to text, spelling, deselect "Check spelling while typing".
And that's all

Thanks. Can you do AD as well?

Hi safoster71,
Have you explored the snapping options in the context toolbar, Snap section when you have the Node Tool selected?
It lets you align nodes individually to nodes on the same or other shapes (as long as they are selected).
Currently the distribute/align (the Arrange icon on the main toolbar) functions don't work with nodes, only with shapes. There was some requests for this, so hopefully it may be added in a future version.

Hi deeds,
 
Thanks for trying to see things from the other side. The two specific things which you point out (for now!) are both things which we are well aware are desirable and we have, from the outset, publicly committed to adding.
 
Why did we ever think it would be acceptable to offer a professional package that doesn't have customisable keyboard shortcuts? Well... that's because I've never (and I mean never) customised a keyboard shortcut in any other graphics software... I just want to use it the way it came - it's easier for tutorials, easier for support. But that's just me... So then we asked the Creative team (and I mean that we have an actual real world team of illustrators and designers - not just a hypothetical one or some random guess work) and in a world of reality where you can only do so many things before a certain date, they also agreed that it would be absolutely fine if customisation could come after a number of other things were finished. Our decision was not an oversight, or one based on some bad information - the people that we were aiming the software at actually value the feature, but would require it to do other things first and could manage in the meantime. As for why we don't make 'what we currently have' customer-facing... it's because we're typing in the code, updating xib files to match and then rebuilding the project - not something that we can give to the customer and expect them to do! This is not a terribly difficult feature to implement - and I refer back to what I said before that it is just this way right now and you know that we have already made clear that it is an important feature that we will add as soon as we're able to.
 
How hard can it be to just turn off the view clipping? Anyone sat in this office would know not to ask me that until I've had quite a few drinks... ;) You would not begin to believe how much is going on with our view to make it pan and zoom the way it does: I think you'll find it's pretty unique in its fluidity for large documents in particular. This is at the absolute core of the experience you will receive in all of our applications in the future so there was no option other than best in class (and then some). I wrote it at least 6 whole times (seriously) from start to finish and everything always had a problem until this variant. Turning off clipping actually means changing the areas we render and how we present them in OpenGL (by this I mean the clipped polygons I generate for each tile and the pixel shaders that I run on the card) - it's not dreadful, it's just not trivial. If I mess it up, I destroy the experience for everyone in all our products. I will do it - and it will be in the space of the next few months, but it needs me to be free and not in the middle of ten other things for it to be given the attention it deserves. Your question of whether I have never dragged a design variant off to the side for comparison/reference whilst working on a copy - well, the answer is that I don't do it. That may be hard for you to believe as that's obviously the way you work, but I just don't work that way. I'd either clone and hide the object then toggle one or the other to see them in place with different versions, or I'd simply lay them side by side on a larger canvas to see and work on either. There's something in my head that can't cope with the background being different and I see the design very differently, so I don't find it a workable solution for me - but that's just me. As I've said with the keyboard shortcuts, we do realise that our customers want this and we are adding it. Why wasn't it there from the start? Again, it's down to the extra time it takes to add these things and simply asking real-world creatives if they want feature x or feature y first.
 
The things that you want are coming. You think that we play up to the fact that we're a version 1.0 software and that we try to get away with not having these 'essentials'. The honest reality is that we are version 1.2 software (although we released at 1.1, so I'm not sure how that works) and we're at the start of the road. The order in which our features have appeared so far have largely been down to practicality - sometimes you'll get a feature you don't expect at a time that seems weird, but that's normally because it's actually just a small tweak of some other thing, or uses the tech introduced by something else. We aren't stupid, we aren't arrogant, we aren't too proud to admit when we make mistakes, we're just actually trying to make something that we want to use at a price we want to pay for it (yes, I did buy Designer for myself the day it came out, just like everyone else!) :)  I don't think we're doing anything so dreadful here that we need to be reprimanded or held up as thoughtless individuals writing an inept clone of something else. The reality of what's achievable with the resources you have in the time that you have available - that's what sets the stage... Start by writing something you can be passionate about to give it a soul and a purpose - make it really good at something. Then flesh out the features when you actually have more time and resources.
 
Hope you can understand my perspective too :)
 
Thanks again,
Matt

You can also change to Node Tool - make sure Snap to selected curves in the Snap section of the context bar is active - and drag the nodes. Smart guides (red and green) will help you align the nodes quickly (for horizontal and vertical alignments respectively).
This also works for the Pen Tool while you're creating your shapes/lines.

Wow! Affinity Designer looks very good from the git-go. It's fast, well organized and pleasant to use. The text handling has some excellent features already. Scrolling through the font menu and watching selected text change live, quite a treat. 
 
The main addition it needs for me to replace AI is arrowheads. I don't need a lot of useless style options such as Adobe offers, just filled triangles that have some adjustment options.
 
    •  placeable on beziers as well as straight lines
    •  auto scale to line thickness
    •  user adjustable scale acting on default size  (+% and -%, i.e.)
    •  user adjustable head angle (again, maybe relative to default)
 
And maybe, if not too much trouble:
    •  an option to have arrowhead extend line OR
           have the line shorten to place the arrow tip at the end of the original segment.
 
Thanks for listening,
Byrne
 
[edit] P.S. Another discussion of arrowheads suggests ability to round corners. Not strictly necessary for me but nice. Acts on all three corners, maybe adjustable as a proportion of the arrowhead's size.