Baron

R C-R, Affinity Designer is already able to cope with the SVG file format complexity quite well when it comes to pasting text containing SVG file data. I've tried all sorts of SVG data pasted into Affinity Designer, and it has no problems decoding the SVGs directly if they are pasted as text data. Inkscape uses the clipboard format "image/x-inkscape-svg" when it pastes shapes to the clipboard in Windows (don't know about the other OS's). This format contains SVG text data, and can have embedded bitmaps in it. Everything you paste into Affinity Designer from Inkscape pastes as SVG data, even if the shapes contain bitmaps. I tested this with all sorts of documents. The application is fully capable of bypassing the embedded document step for all such SVG data, but does so only for pasted SVG data. So without a doubt it can support this via drag and drop and place operations, but it simply doesn't give us an option to do so. It's a limitation based on a design decision someone made at affinity. Thanks. I'll make a request if there isn't already one there. Something along that line is what I'm looking at. I did a test with 2 simple separate SVG icons files. I opened them in a text editor and combined them. I wrapped them withing a single <g> tag (this creates 1 layer) containing 2 separate <g> tags (this creates 2 groups) with id values matching the filenames. See below. I can open this file directly in Affinity Designer. Then select all, and it selects the 2 different shapes. Then I can add them as assets. So all I need to do is get my SVGs into a multi shape SVG file formated like this and I'm good to go. <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <g> <g id="home"> <path d="M10 20v-6h4v6h5v-8h3L12 3 2 12h3v8z"/> <path d="M0 0h24v24H0z" fill="none"/> </g> <g id="accessibility"> <path d="M0 0h24v24H0z" fill="none"/> <path d="M12 2c1.1 0 2 .9 2 2s-.9 2-2 2-2-.9-2-2 .9-2 2-2zm9 7h-6v13h-2v-6h-2v6H9V9H3V7h18v2z"/> </g> </g> </svg>

That's the problem with that approach. 30 seconds x 1000 icons = 30,000 seconds. That's 8 hours and 20 minutes. The method I outlined above using the paste from Inkscape workaround only takes about 20 seconds for 200 files. The only problem being the loss of the filenames. Maybe I can find a tool that can rename the shape group within the SVG files to match their filenames. If I can do that, then I can use the Inkscape workaround without losing the filenames. I tested that by manually editing the SVG files, adding a meaningful group name and it works. So all I need is a tool that does that. Or I can program my own tool if I can't find one.

Hi Wosven, The other method of using Inkscape is to drag and drop the SVG files directly into an Inkscape document, then Select All from Inkscape and Copy them, then Paste them into an Affinity Designer document. That works just as well. Same results. Using Inkscape is a workaround for this, but not in my case. My problem is that the SVG icons I'm trying to use have meaningful filenames, but within the SVG data there are no names, so Inkscape creates a non-meaningful name like g1651 for the shape name instead of using the filename for the shape name. So I lose all the unique filenames for the icons. I can see in your example that the Apple Pay icon suffered that fate, losing it's meaningful name. I have hundreds of these kinds of icons, and they are all losing their names in this Inkscape process. Having to edit all the names 1 by 1 for hundreds of icons will take forever. If I don't care about the name loss, this would be a viable workaround, but I care about the names being preserved.

I consider this a design flaw in the software. If I drag and drop an SVG file into my current Affinity Designer document from the Windows Explorer, or by using File ▸ Place, I would expect it to be added to my document as a group shape, not as an embedded document. I am trying to do the same thing as Ammar: creating an asset package with hundreds of SVG files. I should be able to do this with 100 SVG files: File▸New to create a new document. Drag and drop 100 SVG files into document. Select ▸ Select All. Assets ▸Create New Category... From my new asset category, click Add From Selection. But instead I need to do this: File▸New to create a new document. File▸Open 1 SVG file. Select▸Select All from opened SVG file. Edit▸Copy from opened SVG file. File▸Close to close opened SVG file. Edit▸Paste to add shape to current document. Repeat steps 2-6 99 more times. Select▸Select All from current document. Assets▸Create New Category... From my new asset category, click Add From Selection. The requirement to open each SVG file as a separate document before importing them as assets is unbelievably time consuming. Why did Affinity do this? This is like shooting one's self in the foot. It's an easy flaw to fix. Because of this design flaw, it's an extremely time consuming thing to create asset packages from existing SVG files. This is going to drastically limit the number of available asset packages created by users for Affinity Designer. Some potential customers will not purchase Affinity Designer because of this flaw. You can see this is the case by searching this forum. As an example of this design flaw, Affinity should try converting the entire set of free Android SVG icons into an asset package for Affinity Designer. Because of this flaw, this will take many hours to complete. Why cripple asset creation like this? Is Affinity working on fixing this?

We need the ability to drag and drop, and copy and paste, SVG files directly into Affinity Designer documents as vector graphics, not as embedded SVG documents. I personally never have seen a use for using embedded SVG documents. I always want the shape data, not the embedded documents. The Affinity Designer software actually already has support for directly pasting SVG files as vector graphics instead of embedded SVG documents. When pasting text that contains SVG file data, it pastes as vector graphics, not as embedded SVG documents. As proof, you can copy and paste this following SVG data directly into an Affinity Designer document and you will see it paste as an SVG rectangle, not as an embedded SVG document: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"> <rect x="25" y="25" width="200" height="200" fill="lime" stroke-width="4" stroke="pink" /> </svg> However, if you save that SVG data as a text file, name it rect.svg, and drag and drop the same SVG data as a file from the Windows explorer into Affinity Designer, it then gets added as an embedded SVG document, which is not what I would ever want. I don't know why anyone would want that. Why is this even a feature? This is not a complex feature request. It's a simple request. Adding a drag and drop operation option that has the same functionality as that which already exists for the clipboard paste operation (when pasting SVG text data) is a very simple addition to Affinity Designer, as it would be mostly reusing pre-existing code that's already in Affinity Designer. I need this direct drag and drop support pretty badly. I am currently trying to import 926 SVG icons in order to create Affinity Designer assets from them. When I open a new document, drag and drop say 100 of these SVG icon files, they get added as embedded documents. I then have to double click each and every single icon one after then next to open their embedded document to access their vector shapes in order to import them as assets. It will take a massive amount of time to do this for all 926 SVG icons. This is a simple task that should only take a few minutes at most, not hours to perform. Note that if I didn't care about the icon file name then I can use the free Inkscape software, drag and drop these same SVG icon files right into Inkscape, and then select all, and then copy and paste them right into an Affinity Designer document, and then they paste as vector graphics, not as embedded documents. I can then select all and import them as assets. This only takes a few minutes to complete for hundreds of SVG icons. I would use this paste from Inkscape workaround if I could, but I lose all of the SVG file names if I paste them that way, so this is not an option for me at this time. I need the file names to remain. Is there any other known workaround currently available that keeps the SVG icon file names and won't take hours to perform for hundreds of SVG icons?