flobnoit

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Changes
Added 'Select Parent', 'Select Top', and 'Select Bottom' to main menu Changed behaviour of Select All when Edit All Layers is disabled - if you’re inside a group, it will now Select All within the group Fixed PDF passthrough getting rasterised if vector cropped  Previous release notes

Please note: I've edited this post to reflect a slightly newer 1.10.0.1115 (vs 1.10.0.1112).

Flobnoit,  I hope it works for you!  The Epilogs are so awesome ❤️ Makes sense now why your way worked for my laser!  I'm still figuring out this transition myself.   All of my old Illustrator files have their cutting lines set to .001 and when I imported them they would vanish to 0 width unless I highlighted them with the node tool and change them to .1 (which luckily still reads as a cut).  But having to change all my files this way will take forever... (& upvoted those threads b/c that would be a great update to see). 
 
You may already have known this but just in case --I did find out that you can make .001 an option but you have to go to:  preferences> decimal places for unit types>  change "points" to 3.   (well I have mine set to points) The problem though is it's still invisible.  .01 is barely visible and .1 seems the best option to work with.  I also found that if you want to select one of your lines that need to be changed and uniform in width you can select its layer box and go up on the menu to select> select same stroke weight and then omg, you can change all of 'em at once!  🙂 Augh, I was so happy when I learned that.  I guess it was added in the update.
 
I really hope they add a hairline width that you can see and work with clearly.  (Even if you have to check and extra setting for better visibility as in a 1 width stroke)  That's how I would work in Illustrator anyhow.

Jan3ll3,
Glad my post helped! Yes, I have an Epilog Helix (renamed to Legend) series device for etching/cutting
I had not actually considered the Print Profile mechanism as a way to preserve my print settings within the Designer dialog - Thanks much I'll give that a go!
Also, there are a couple of threads in the suggestions here asking for a hairline stroke-weight option (in my laser system: such an option would simplify sending a cut instruction to the laser instead of a raster etch). I'm not aware that Affinity has ruled it out as a request; but if you think that it'd be useful in your workflow mayhaps you'd like to upvote the idea. Here's an active request thread 
 

I've been using Affinity Designer to create files for use on a laser cutter and because there is no option for a hairline stroke (or near zero stroke width) I have to take my files into another program to change the stroke width before I can use the files on the laser cutter (The laser cutter views hairline or near zero stroke widths as a cut line). I love Affinity Designer but having to bring my file back and forth between different programs makes it rather frustrating. If you could please add an option for hairline or near zero stroke width (such as .001) it would make the process of designing files for laser cutting a lot less frustrating.

Regardless, the request for a hairline stroke weight setting is valid. (It's been brought up before in other threads.)
For those not familiar, a hairline stroke weight always renders at the smallest width possible on the output device, be it your monitor or an imagesetter. This is advantageous when drawing paths in detailed illustrations, during which we are constantly zooming in and out. Having stroke weight set to hairline feels more precise and is less distracting because the stroke weight is always drawn the same, regardless of zoom. The extreme zooming capabilities of Affinity as compared to other programs buttresses the point.
It's a great feature, a standard setting in PostScript, and it should be provided in every vector drawing software.
JET

Hey 🙂 I'm assuming you mean laser cutter vs. printer; either way, I was super stuck until I saw your post... Kept trying to print to the laser and the orientation was landscape/vertical and horizontal/portrait?  What? Lol-- But I'd left it set at automatic since that had always worked for me before coming from Illustrator.  I switched to portrait after immense frustration and reading what you went through and oh my gosh, it worked... (you can see where I did a test file and the bottom part where it began making the file huge and off to the side...) must have stopped it four or five times.  Sooo I don't know what kind of laser you have or if you can do the same thing and it work, but  I just saved a profile for my settings on print after it was successful.  It would be better to have a checkbox like you mentioned though.  Maybe there's a way to save the orientation when printing from Designer that you can preset to keep from messing up future projects.  I know how annoying that can be- 

Thanks @Jowday. Shout out to @Chris J who worked on the fix!

Yeah it's a CloudFront URL. Which means the file is pushed around the world to multiple data centres so that the downloads are faster if you're further from the original server.
We do the same for our retail builds on the Affinity Store.

Thanks for the report. Just to let you know I've just fixed the issue, and will put the fix into a beta release shortly if you would like to test it out.

It would be very nice if you could collapse all layers at once in the layers panel. Layers become very difficult to work with when you have many of them since selecting objects expands the parent layer, so you have to scroll back up and manually collapse them yourself.
Perhaps you could have it so that layers are only expanded for as long as the item within it is selected? That way, after deselecting an object, the layer expansion goes back to its previous state, which is ether expanded or collapsed. Am I making any sense?

Hi flobnoit,

Thanks for getting back to us and letting us know it is now working in the beta!  

The issues demonstrated are RESOLVED in Beta 1.8.1.604. 
My thanks to the Developers and the moderators ☺️. 

(...)

I was working on a very simple design with the pen tool. I got to the point where I needed to expand the strokes of those paths, and I ended up getting a very unexpected result. Even though they are very simple shapes, the curves got distorted after being expanded.
I tested this with Designer 1.6.5.135 as well as the latest beta release.
I've attached a couple of PNGs illustrating the issue and the file I was working on so you can take a better look at it.


expand strokes.afdesign

Also, you can add a shortcut if you don't want to use the Context Toolbar, for the Node Tool and the Pen Tool (in Node Tool mode, when you press Ctrol/Cmd):


 
When using the Pen Tool, keep presses Ctrl/Cmd to acces to the Node Tool functionality. Check the video and answer I gave in this thread.
 
Is that the same as the Divide Operation?

 
What about copying and then use Paste Inside (Ctrl + Alt + V on Windows)?
 
Maybe when the Plugins capabilities are finally available, we'll be able to write Scripts, since I don't know if Serif is planning to add the Macro capabilities available in Photo.
 
Agreed. This is available in DrawPlus, so I have high hopes that we'll have it on Designer.
 
That's available when you use the Eyedropper from the Color Panel (also available in a lof of places inside the program):

 
I got myself used to the Ctrl + Enter shortcut. Maybe you could give it a try.
 
What about Ctrl + L when selecting the Object?
 
Hope some of this is of use.
Best regards!

Click here to download the latest beta
 
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
 
Fixes
Fixed drag drop from Explorer to floating Document Windows Fixed Combine Identical remaining enabled for text styles Fixed Punctuation stops Capitalise first word of sentence from working  Fixed Tools toolbar leaving monitor viewport when undocking Fixed failure to save if HEIC file is used in document  Fixed drag/drop text from Explorer  Fixed snapping to guides and page edges Fixed importing of user items in correct order Fixed Drop Caps misaligned when using Baseline grid  Fixed incorrect curve printing Fixed incorrect codepage mapping for code page 950  Fixed crash loading corrupt BMP files Allow right mouse button to be pressed when capturing numeric input for tools (currently for use with Flow in brush tools) Fixed Pen Tool not snapping to grid unless you zoom in/out first  Fixed scrolling history with mouse wheel removes highlight  Fixed print copies limited to 99  Changed TIFF export to use Adobe deflate instead, as it's more common Fixed sporadic PSD export crash  Fixed Brush preview not updating immediately when adding/modifying sub-brushes  Fixed Basic Grid failing to show 'Spacing' and 'Divisions' entry boxes on Grid and Axis Manager  Fixed being unable to select a crop preset  Fixed sub-brush 'Sync' checkboxes not remembering state correctly Added missing Duplicate Brush from Brush panel context menu Fixed creation of CMYK tint colour chord creating RGB swatches Fixed changing of document DPI to no longer resize the document Allow linear profiles for all RGB formats on import (but still try to dissuade incorrect use by not offering them in the convert dialog) Prevent dragging of locked layers Fixed Edit in Photo/Designer preventing the application from closing  Fixed Greek uppercase to not have tonas Fixed hang after exporting to external drive then removing drive Fixed letterspacing to apply to spaces as well as other characters  Fixed embedded documents not exporting masks to PDF correctly  Fixed PDF export of documents containing palettised PNG  Fixed Document Zoom Level changing to 'Fit' when a Symbol is dragged out Fixed textured vector brushes failing to show correctly in Brush Editor  Fixed crash when adding to a symbol after deleting all the children in one detached instance  Fixed Asset sub-category order not remembered after closing app Remember Create Artboard checkbox state

If I may…
I don't mean to come across like some kind of self-appointed "forum sheriff", but you guys would do well to better explain the specific functionality you desire. You're referring to a proprietary tool in a specific program; Illustrator's so-called Free Transform Tool.
No doubt countless skilled users of programs other than Illustrator have no idea what you're talking about as a "real free transform tool." In fact, having spent decades in the Illustrator user forums, I dare say even many, many Illustrator users don't know what it's for, and seldom touch it. It's certainly not among the most commonly used features.
When it comes down to it, Illustrator's Free Transform Tool is just another bounding box based scaling tool. As such, its behavior probably could be integrated as a few more keyboard-modified behaviors of Affinity's existing and (sometimes oppressively) omnipresent bounding boxes, rather than as another dedicated toolbox icon.
Illustrator's Free Transform Tool is kind of a pre-cursor to more capable envelope-based distortion features that came to most programs later. (And envelope-based distortion—warping, etc.— is on Affinity's roadmap, and none of us, as yet, have any idea how the interface of that will work.) That's why you need to describe or demonstrate the specific functionality you are desiring instead of just invoking the little-understood proprietary name of a program-specific feature.
Illustrator's Free Transform Tool is, frankly, also rather poorly implemented. Long time Illustrator forum regulars (including myself) have many times tediously explained to other users (and not just beginners)  the tedious sequence of multiple keyboard momentary modifiers required to invoke its faux "perspective" thing ("mousedown then Ctrl-Alt; mousedown then Ctrl-Alt!"). Further tedium stems from its most potential-killing aspect: that its bounding box resets to a rectangle after each and every move of one of its handles . FreeHand's similar tool, for example, didn't do that. It held its transformed shape (like an envelope), so it was much more useful for the most common purposes, like moving each corner of the bounding box to corresponding corners of an obliquely-viewed surface by a series of moves.
But my larger point is this: In this thread, some of you associate words like "crippling" with this request. But if there's anything actually debilitating about Affinity transformations at the moment it's that all of its on-page interactive (pointing device driven) transformations are based on dragging the infernal bounding box handles. That's the real issue that needs to be addressed; not just a "me, too" copy of Illustrator's specific treatment of a rather dated and limited bounding box-based warp behavior.
Think bigger. Forget Illustrator.
JET

Windows 7 = 20% of our Windows user-base. Working really hard to make this happen for all customers.

Just a quick update. We were planning on releasing the new beta for Windows on Monday (4 days ago), but unfortunately we discovered a bug which was crashing Windows 7 machines to crash when launching the apps. I considered launching the beta for Windows 10 users only, but ultimately decided that we should wait until the issue has been fully resolved. Unfortunately it's taking a little longer than expected, but hopefully it will be available soon.
 

Hi,
 
well, first off you have to know that the Epilog-driver behaves like absolute garbage. Besides its quirks it crashes a lot because it is not really optimised to run under system environments newer than Windows XP. Nontheless we have it running under Windows 10 which works quite well, but you have to bear certain things in mind.
 
First off, every document must have the exact size of the laser bed. If its smaller than this, it is probable that rendering problems will happen.
 
Second, everything you want the laser to cut out must be in vector form with a stroke width of 0.01 pt (just type it in, it will show as 0 pt after you pressed "Enter" but it will work).
 
Furthermore, you must set all the laser settings in the Print--->Settings Menu in Affinity Designer. Changing options later in the Epilog Manager after you pressed "print" will cause a mess with a high probability.
 
This should hopefully help you quite a bit
Tom

Hi,
 
We are pleased to announce the Windows release of Affinity Designer , version 1.6.5
FIXLIST
The changes in Affinity Designer for Windows 1.6.5 over the last ADe  patch 1.6.4 are as follows:
- Fixed Document Setup dialog failing to show correct Height and Width values when switching between portrait modes
- Fixed incorrect colour from CMYK waterfall model
- Improve Microsoft Dial support
- Improve PDF import 
- Fixed resized floating panel not sticking when swapping to a different panel 
- Fixed crash when dragging artboards
- Fixed floating window panels to remember their width as well as height
- Fixed Colour Picker shortcut not working with Surface Pen 
- Improved performance of shutdown 
- Fixed Leading Override (Character panel) and Paragraph Leading (Paragraph panel) key modifier inconsistencies
- Fixed empty gap at the bottom of the font size dropdown 
- Fixed crash when we can't identify any font families in a font 
- Fixed Pen point being placed when panning with spacebar 
- Added missing "Scrubby Zoom”
- Fixed Space bar panning with the paintbrush tool placing nozzlesFixed tool handle selection with touch input 
- Fixed SVG export to avoid exporting spurious groups
- Fixed pressing escape key on font size context toolbar editor not returning focus
- Added option to prefer metafile over raster with per-application default (default to on)
- Fixed main window closing on second monitor not appearing at next start
- Fixed Adjustments panel starting below the visible window 
- Fixed Print dialog not defaulting to current selected artboard
- Fixed Transform panel fields losing focus when using arrow and shift+arrow keys to increment/decrement values
- Fixed intermittent crash when using the Pen Tool 
- Fixed drag dropping a PNG file into the document locks the file
- Fixed rendering issues with custom display scales between 125% and 150%
- Fixed crash pasting into Microsoft Paint
- Fixed dialogs not appearing on second monitor 
- Fixed margins not being set for new artboard documents 
- Fixed keyboard shortcuts becoming disabled after pressing Escape in the Pressure dialog 
- Fixed move up/down in the Assets Panel not correctly enabling after moving a category that is first or last 
- Fixed Embed Assets in Current Document selection state being reversed 
- Fixed colour conversion of bitmaps during vector export
- Fixed adjusting line pressure being laggy 
- Fixed deleting a node on the stroke pressure editor not updating the document
- Fixed New Document dialog not being aligned nicely
- Fixed rotating nodes not being remembered
- Fixed editing a Curves Adjustment preventing you from using Keyboard Shortcuts to add additional 
- Fixed unable to type after tabbing when editing a swatch value
- Fixed RGB slider field getting a dotted outline when tabbing into it 
- Fixed pressing delete with a stop selected on the Gradient Flyout deletes the object, not the stop
- Fixed sporadic crash when sizing text frames to fit
- Fixed editing a guide in Guides Manager not correctly changing selection 
- Fixed adding colour to swatch causes crash 
- Fixed shaking a floating panel minimizes other panels
- Fixed fill layers built-in masks are broken 
- Fixed export area dropdown not working like the macOS version 
- Fixed Pen tool to add snapping while restart dragging under Pen mode
- Numerous other fixes and stability improvements.
REGRESSIONS
There is one known regression in this build over the previous release 1.6.4 (available here), sorry for this inconvenience
 - Artboards in embedded .afdesign file do not export to PDF
Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Bugs on Windows section
For purchases from the Affinity Store the software, each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here
For purchases from the Microsoft Store are done automatically (next time you run after it is available in the store)
 

"getting" ? 

This thread is getting ridiculous. 

Yes, this is the latest at the moment. Whichever thread is pinned at the top of the beta forum has a link to the latest beta build. 
Also we tend to overwrite the beta installer on our server, so even if a customer found an old thread in this forum the link would still be to the latest build.