MGHimages

Today I got to try out the new Designer 1.7. My two biggest problems were solved!! Well....almost, but I'm not complaining. The first and biggest problem... At the office, I use a 4k TV as a monitor, and 40" 4k monitor at home. Because of my monitor choices, Designer would freeze up whenever I tried to change text fonts. This would often cause me to lose a fair chunk of work if I forgot to save before attempting a font change. I would have to disconnect the monitor, use the laptop screen to change fonts, then reconnect the monitor. Quite frustrating, but not something to cause me to seek out a different illustration solution. Designer has FAR too many positives to jump ship for something that would eventually come in an update. NO MORE!! Font changes are available on my 4k displays. Second item was arrowheads. I use Designer for a wide variety of creative work, along with technical drawings. Arrowheads were possible with the shape tool, but required some extra steps to get them to work in tech drawings, and weren't easily curv-able. Now arrowheads are built into the pen tool, as they should be. Thank you Affinity! As an added bonus, while adjusting an arrow with the node tool, and holding the control key, the line/arrow can be curved in a very controllable manner. Now to put on some polishing touches... I'd like to see more "feather" like arrow tails. Not a critical need, but would be nice. Another request would be the ability to adjust the length of the arrowhead. Similar to what's available in the Arrow Shape tool. Maybe it's already possible, and I just don't see the control. Overall, I fell in love with Designer after a few hours of use and learning. Since I never could get a good grasp of Adobe Illustrator, I preferred Corel Draw. But, Draw isn't available on Mac. So Designer turned out to be the PERFECT solution!!

Bumping this topic! I have used Corel Draw for years and years. Have tried Adobe Illustrator, YUUUCK!!! But I have fallen in LOVE with Affinity Designer for MacOS!!! I use vector illustration software quite a bit in, believe it or not, construction management and estimating. Never know when I have to create my own plans details, or illustrate an existing condition in the field. BUT...line/curve arrows are the cornerstone of Designer's purpose in my life, and they're missing!! From what I can tell, in spite of this frequent and long lived request from many others before me, they've been missing since inception. Every time I need to make a drawing, I have to fumble around with the arrow shape tool. Very frustrating. AFFINITY...PLEASE ADD ARROW HEADS TO LINES/CURVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! While you're at it, dimension lines, with a scaling feature would be a great Christmas present for us this year. If you take a peak at BluBeam Revu, you will find some great tools for the construction industry. I'd be willing to pay (a reasonable price, i.e. $20 to $50) for a Designer Construction Add-On pack that will add scalable dimension, area, volume, and perimeter tools.