cadobir

+1

+1. (i used this a lot in CorelDRAW)

+1!
 
(
)

+1 for vector fill

I see what you mean. I also wouldn't mind to have the ability to fill objects with vector patterns. Thread moved to the Suggestions for Affinity Designer on Desktop section.

Hi MEB,
Thank you for your reply. Although symbols are a very powerful feature is not what I would need to accomplish the task.
I work as 3D visualizer and sometimes I get from clients ready render where I need to put e.g. on a wall lines simulating wood panels, and here I would need a vector fill with the ability to change the size exactly like the Bitmap in the fill tool behave. I'm aware of the Procedural texture available in Photo beta, but I would love to have the vector power of that feature over Designer.
PhotoLine has this feature where the user can add/create any pattern and the objects will fill with it in a extremely easy way. Maybe it worth for you to check it out, because I'm an Serif products sucker
Could this topic be moved to feature request?

Hi all,
I'm considering buying Designer but one thing that I can't find is if there is a way to fill an object using vector or patterns. I only find gradients and bitmap.
I know we can duplicate an object to create hand made pattern but I can't then edit the repetitions like if is a bitmap fill.
Cheers,
Juan

I'm just finishing up a project in which vector warp, distortion, etc, would have saved me at least an entire day of work. It would be really great if these features could be added sooner rather than later.

Hey everyone,

I have recently jumped ship from the Adobe suite to Affinity, and I have been loving it.
A big thumbs up to the team at Serif for providing such a powerful product.

The only 2 features that I have actually missed from Adobe illustrator are the offset path and shape builder tools.
That's why I'd like to join in with the request to add these into Designer in the future. 😃

Keep up the great work 💪

Hi,
Offset path and Shape Builder tools  are so essential in our design workflow. REALLY hope to see these tools very soon.
Best Regards,
Fahad Alyafei

first, i like to take this time to say thanks for keeping the creative community empowered with a great application! so far, i am very impressed with the software!   i'm sure you folks have your list of things you are working on. however, as someone switching from the more recognized gorilla vector app, i have a few tools that i sorely miss & could really use soonest (like today):   a. OFFSET TOOL (all the work-arounds i've seen so far are infuriating)! b. a pattern library, and c. AUTO-TRACE!!   would be NICE: i realize that i can be making my own patterns, and probably will eventually create some as time allows. however, until you offer some affinity/serif-produced patterns, could this be a community/open-sourced effort? heck, i believe i'd be willing to contribute one or two to share with the community.   NEEDED: regarding the offset & auto-trace features, that's just stuff that i, frankly, expected to see in the software. not having them is a major drag on my workflow & efficiency. i'm sure you've had other requests for other vector app migrators like myself, but including these functions would really make the app world class.   thanks again!  

Hello.
I understand that there is a certain amount of features  we will get from the Affinity 1 versions. 
But add these two functions to version 2 of Designer and it would be an instant buy for me.  
 
In my opinion Affinity is a great tool for Illustrators, but I think it's time to focus more on "Designers" tools: Logo, Branding, Icon creation. BIG Market there.
The improved "convert to paths" tool is a step in the right direction.
 
thanks

Hello.
I know these two functions have been asked before and some people question them ( specially the Shape Builder Tool) but I found a quick video that shows them working together.
I think these are the only two things I'm missing from Illustrator . These two tools are  pretty much essential for Logo and Brand Designers (which I'm sure are a big market )
Hope they are added to the road map soon , now that you are working on the improved convert to path function.
Thanks
 
 
 

I'm second to that. Offset feature is one of the things I use daily. 

There are some alternative ways to create that feature in Affinity but it's very archaic and not accurate; I usually use in in very small measurements such as 0.1mm and so. 

Please let us have it soon :)

Adding my desire for an offset path tool. It is a powerful design tool, especially for designs when close enough isn't good enough. Adding to clarify: Although there are workarounds for offsetting the path of a shape, there is no good method for doing this with an open path.
I recommend Photo with no hesitation to photographers, this tool is one of a few missing ones that make me a little more cautious about recommending Designer to designers. And one of the reasons I still use Illustrator alongside Designer.

5 years later... This is still actually a problem. It's not wrong to hide the parts of objects crossing the boundaries of artboards WHEN THE USER WANTS TO. It should be switchable. And it would be VERY VERY USEFUL  to have guides that span multiple artboards and are visible in the... pasteboard, is that your name for it? Drawing table? Background? Anyway, having the artboards force a crop inside the program, while I'm working, can really get in the way. 

5 years later... This is still actually a problem. It's not wrong to hide the parts of objects crossing the boundaries of artboards WHEN THE USER WANTS TO. It should be switchable. And it would be VERY VERY USEFUL  to have guides that span multiple artboards and are visible in the... pasteboard, is that your name for it? Drawing table? Background? Anyway, having the artboards force a crop inside the program, while I'm working, can really get in the way. 

This is really more of a CAD feature so not entirely within scope of an illustration program - I wouldn't expect it to have a particularly high priority right now, but it certainly wouldn't be an unwelcome enhancement.

I would like to make a suggestion of something I would find useful and others may too.  I realize that designer is geared to creating pictures and art but often I am making an actual 'design' of a item where I need dimensions added.   So I was wondering if any though was or could be given to adding a dimension tool that scales so I can make a 1 inch square and set the scale to 1 inch = 1 ft - take a dimension tool and pick two nodes and the drafting lines would be drawn and text showing the length using the scale would appear.
 
Just a thought.

Keep fighting for your needs as a designer, my fellow user (I would've given you a “thank you” react, but I've already spent mine for the day, by the way).
Serif's stance on the sacredness of their current document model is untenable, and people will keep finding the lack of this basic and obvious option dumbfounding, but the only way the developers will cave in is if enough users do ask for it, and do so persistently and vehemently enough.

“By design” (emphasis mine). And herein lies the issue with some of Serif's decisions: bad UX design and the absence of choice for the user in order to fix/work around them.
If your users are actively contesting features that work the way they do “by design”, rather than just because of bugs, something is seriously wrong with your product and your vision, regardless of how good your sales figures are or how happy some niches (or even the majority!) of your users feel about it, and especially considering that adding those choices wouldn't hurt them in the least either way. A badly designed product can be way more frustrating and less dependable than a well designed, albeit buggy one.
Yeah, I'm bumping this thread here a bit as well, sorry. But just like the “advanced selection” one (probably even more so), it must be kept alive, as other posters said before. You already have our money and us as users, so… deal with it and fix it.

[Edit: for your convenience, I created a new, specific and more focused request, as the original one from this current thread is partially solved already. I'm leaving this comment here for archival purposes, but if you want to save yourself the trouble of reading all this, you're better off checking the new one.]
Ok, @MEB, I'm tagging @Patrick Connor as well and I'll ask you for a little help here, or, if this feature I'm asking for hasn't been implemented already, a little compromise on your part, please. It should be easy to code and require either an extra button on the layers panel, or an extra checkbox in the settings window.
I've just realised that if we bring the objects outside of the artboards and into a layer above all of them, we actually get a “universal layer” and can export each artboard and have objects that span them display both while editing, with the pre-selected and grayed-out “Clip to Canvas” setting, and on the exported files. This is indeed the behaviour I intended on, and will save me all of those shenanigans with slices I was talking about before.
The thing is: there is no way of preventing Designer from moving objects out of one of those universal layers and into an artboard layer whenever moving an object over the artboard it was already over. It immediately gets sucked into that artboard the moment I click and drag it. Funnily enough, if I nudge it with the arrow keys, it won't do that, so there's already some inconsistency there.
Please, please, PLEASE, PLEASE give us a mode where we have full control over which layers our objects go to and stay in. I've tried everything: locking the artboard layers, hiding them, disabling the “Edit all layers” option, nothing works. AD keeps doing what it thinks is best for me, even though I do not want it to. For me, AD will be useless for many projects, and all it takes is for you to add a “Automatically move objects from external layers into artboards” toggle. Please do it. It will be an insta-fix for all the issues I mentioned.
I know I'm not being too clear here, but if you want I can provide you with some narrated video screen captures of both Ai and AD so I can explain you the interaction model I'm aiming at. I REALLY want to use AD for all of my work, and I REALLY want to unreservedly rally behind it and recommend it to my students. If you want me to do that, PM me or something, because now that I finally turned in my dissertation I have much more free time to help you right now.

Ok, @MEB, I'm tagging @Patrick Connor as well and I'll ask you for a little help here, or, if this feature I'm asking for hasn't been implemented or isn't on the roadmap already, a little compromise on your part, please. It should be easy to code and require either an extra button on the layers panel, or an extra checkbox in the settings window.
When testing this use case again on the latest Designer beta, I've just realised that if we move, in the layers panel, the objects from any of the artboards into a layer above all of the latter, we actually get a “universal layer” of sorts and can export each adjacent artboard and have any objects that span/straddle them display in their entirety both while editing – even with the pre-selected and grayed-out “Clip to Canvas” setting, yes – and on the exported .PDF files. This is indeed the behaviour I intended, and would save me all of those shenanigans with slices I was talking about before. It would indeed allow me to work with AD in the same work I do with Ai and did with Freehand. Maybe you added this from Publisher? Maybe I was just a bit of an idiot and didn't realise it was already possible-ish?
The thing is: yes, it's all nice and good to see that things are progressing in the right direction, but this isn't a workable option yet as there is no way of preventing Designer from automatically moving objects out of one of those “universal layers” and into an artboard layer whenever moving an object over the artboard it was already over. It immediately gets sucked into that artboard the moment I click and drag it, thus rendering any actual “unversal layer” work, like multi-page technical diagrams, impossible (maybe I could use rectangles as faux artboards while working, and just add real ones when exporting, but I'm betting AD would start sucking objects into them left and right and screw me over anyway; edit: I've just checked, and that's precisely what AD does, so perhaps that toggle I'm proposing could also apply to newly created artboards, now that I think of it). “Frustrating”, as another user put it, doesn't even begin to describe how this feels. “Infuriating” is probably more appropriate of a term. Funnily enough, if I nudge an object with the arrow keys, it won't do that, so there's already some inconsistency there.
Please, please, PLEASE, PLEASE give us a mode where we have full control over which layers/artboards our objects go to and stay on (you know, like, if we select a layer and start creating new objects, they automatically go there and stay there no matter what until we click on another layer in the Layers panel or on an object from a different layer? Even if we already have several artboards strewn around? That would also allow us to have artboard-specific objects, kind of like ersatz “master pages/watermarks” which would move along with them, while having content floating above them, which would make AD great for technical work, like technical drawing for dummies, something which Corel and even Ai are also decent for). I've tried everything to prevent that behaviour: locking the artboard layers, hiding them, disabling the “Edit all layers” option, nothing works. AD keeps doing what it thinks is best for me, even though I do not want it to. For me, AD will be useless for many projects, and all it takes to change that is for you to add an “Automatically move objects from external/universal layers into artboards” toggle (yeah, I'm not too sure on the naming convention for those layers, but you should come up with a name for them, as they are indeed special; only incomplete and useless at the moment). Please do it. It will be an insta-fix for all the issues I and other users mentioned. And if the default is the option most of your user base is used to anyway, there will be virtually no disruption to their workflow.
Win-win situation, am I right? If you decided and were able to implement that “select object when intersects [sic] with selection marquee” (yes, you should fix that typo, by the way) to accommodate both Corel and Adobe users – an option which is nice but not critical, as muscle-memory is easily retrainable, whereas entire workflows may be either possible or not depending on more low-level UX issues like this one –, you should be able to throw us soon-to-be-former Ai users a little bone, yes? Call it “manual mode”, if you will. A mode in which AD doesn't decide anything for you and gives you full control, kind of like that magical “Allow document pages to shuffle” option in InDesign which puts everything into a “manual mode” of sorts but does allow you to produce extra complex documents that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Will it be harder to use for some users? Yes. Will it allow other users to actually work with your software? Also yes.
And before you say it, I do know you could probably use the Designer persona in Affinity Publisher to overcome this limitation, but I feel that's a bit overkill and extremely unfair for people who may not have a need for that app otherwise (I will buy it anyway, but I should stand up for those users as well). Also, it wouldn't allow you do easily make manual booklet impositions or more complex documents, as APub can't even do multiple-page spreads yet and will never allow you to move pages on two axes, I'm guessing. Do you want students to be able use Designer for prototypes done with their large format inkjet printers, or not? Yes, I know what I'm talking about sounds a bit bizarre, but we did make such experimental projects, with objects spanning multiple spreads, at both my BFA and MA, to learn the ins and outs of imposition (we basically did the pages in InDesign and reimported them as .PDFs into Ai and did the whole thing by hand) and print production in general. Publisher can definitely handle objects spanning multiple artboards (and universal layers, by default), and Designer would also be technically able to do so (well, it already is, as long as you don't touch it with your mouse/trackpad  ), if it wasn't for that choice you made for us and which we can't toggle.
I know I'm probably not being too clear here, as we're all on the same timezone and it's almost 3 AM now, but if you want I can provide you with some narrated video screen captures of both Ai and AD so I can explain you the interaction model I'm aiming at. I REALLY want to use AD for all of my work, and I REALLY want to unreservedly rally behind it and recommend it to my students. If you want me to do that, PM me or something, because now that I finally turned in my dissertation I have much more free time to help you in earnest. Also, speaking of teaching, as soon as I [hopefully and finally!!] graduate in a few weeks I'll be sending CVs and portfolios to all design schools in Lisbon for teaching positions, so maybe come September you'll have yet more platforms where your wares will be promoted.

Agreed. It really needs to be able to use the area outside of the canvas. I end up using Sketch to work on objects and then copy them back into Affinity.

I think they need to put this to the current roadmap.