Malauch

In my workflow I use vector graphic software to edit maps after generating them in GIS software. GIS software is very limited in term of creating maps for print, so external editing is very often necesarry. At the beginnig I used Adobe Illustrator but with big maps it's just useless (veeery slow and can't save all objects). So I started to use Affinity Designer and compare to Adobe Illustrator it's just awsome. Even 1,2 GB vector only files are not a problem for Designer. However recetly I found lack of certain functionality, which would make my work much easier. I would like to resize and basicly edit all selected object at once. I could use Symbols for it but there is one problem. There is no option to replace all selected with choosen Symbol. 
This one with announced option to find/select object by appearance would be ultimate turbo boost for my workflow. 

In my workflow I use vector graphic software to edit maps after generating them in GIS software. GIS software is very limited in term of creating maps for print, so external editing is very often necesarry. At the beginnig I used Adobe Illustrator but with big maps it's just useless (veeery slow and can't save all objects). So I started to use Affinity Designer and compare to Adobe Illustrator it's just awsome. Even 1,2 GB vector only files are not a problem for Designer. However recetly I found lack of certain functionality, which would make my work much easier. I would like to resize and basicly edit all selected object at once. I could use Symbols for it but there is one problem. There is no option to replace all selected with choosen Symbol. 
This one with announced option to find/select object by appearance would be ultimate turbo boost for my workflow. 

Is setting stroke to 0,001 mm not enough? You can adjust decimal placeses for units in preferences. 

Is setting stroke to 0,001 mm not enough? You can adjust decimal placeses for units in preferences. 

Thank you! I tried to find it in preferences but I just didn't connect "Show lines in points" name with strokes width.

Thank you! I tried to find it in preferences but I just didn't connect "Show lines in points" name with strokes width.

Please implement distribute objects along a path
It's a potentially very useful feature to many.

 

Just to report that Expand Stroke function still suck.
Check attached file, and zoom in first on top one, then on bottom.
 
CPP TEST.afdesign

Offset path or even more complex contour tool would very useful for many works. I found on this forum some old disscusion about these tool but it was long ago and still not happend and even not present on roadmap. So I just would like to make little reminder about it with a lot of hope to find it in future update.
 

Ygoe, no one is suggesting that. Deeds said:
Again, as I explained at length, even Adobe Illustrator's Arrowheads are stored as ordinary symbols; they just reside in a separate file that has to be awkwardly accessed in order to customize them or add to them. That separate, ordinary .ai file (rather crudely, as implemented) serves as an app-level "library" to populate the arrowheads popup menus in the Attributes palette. (Illustrator does the very same cumbersome hack with bevel profiles for its 3D Effect plug-in.)
No one is suggesting that every Affinity user should have to draw their own arrowheads from scratch. The program would be assumed to ship with practical collections of pre-built Symbols libraries, just as other features (brushes, swatches, patterns, etc.) are typically pre-populated.
For technical illustration, I would even favor having such pre-built arrowhead symbol libraries that conform to the several mechanical drafting standards. But even if those were not provided with the program, there would be nothing stopping an enterprising Affinity user from creating and distributing them.
There would be nothing lost in the functionality of ordinary traditional arrowheads as a result of cleanly integrating path strokes, ends, brushes, symbols, and graphic styles for far greater and more versatile functionality instead of effectively implementing them as yet another lame collection of seemingly isolated, standalone, single-purpose features. As Illustrator demonstrates, that "isolated" aspect has nothing to do with actual functionality; it's just due to the program's outdated, scattered, cluttered, and confused piecemeal interface design.
This is yet another area of huge opportunity for Affinity to surpass the archaic mediocrity of most other Bezier-based drawing programs.
JET
 

I recommended your product to several people in architecture/planning. The missing select same feature is essentially for us, as we often work on maps or exported PDF/Dwgs with a lot of lines and polygones.
Please add this feature and you will attract a lot more users.

Just add shape/layer binding, then we can use our own symbols and shapes as arrow heads, or ANYTHING else at the end, or vertices and their midpoints.
Much simpler, much more powerful.
Let the binding have constraint rules, such as rotation and anchor. Then call it a day, send programmers out for lunch.

I made a post about this well over a year ago and it got zero attention.  I refuse to believe I am the only one who finds this frustrating, so perhaps I explained it poorly.
I use Affinity Designer primarily for Web and Application design work. 
Now often, I'll have a specific element, button, interface, whatever that I am working on and am not quite sure of the design yet.  I'll draw up a couple of alternatives, and swap them out to see which I like best.  It is this swapping that I find so annoying!  Constantly having to find the one that is presently displayed, click it to hide it, then the one I want to show, and click to show it.
I wish there was a way to link specific items together as being a single unique 'item', that only one of will every display at a time.  Then I can quickly and easily swap between all of them by simply clicking the check mark next to the one I would like to see.
Please consider working this as a feature into Affinity Designer.  It is something I do all the time and find incredibly frustrating.

I’m so totally stoked about this beta. I have spent a couple hours poking around, and I can say that this beta is further along than I expected. I have high hopes that this will in time replace Indesign for us (a small publisher), and it looks well on track.
Among several features that wowed right away and other "missing features" that I can work around, the one thing that stood out for me is the lack of GREP searches. In Indesign, I have a small series of GREP searches that I have saved over the past years, and I run nearly everything through them. A couple minutes on a typical file, and I have made several hundred changes. When I work on a book, the changes are in the thousands. (Note: I publish in French, and French typography relies heavily on non-breaking spaces; these GREP searches help me rapidly put them where they ought to go.)
While you're there: being able to save the searches as presets would be ideal. And as not everyone is familiar with GREP, a few pre-saved searches would help provide them immediate use: remove multiple spaces, remove trailing space, etc.

I know you've only been out a couple of hours with the BETA, but where's the coffee making ability? I need this straight away. When is it coming? Today, tomorrow, next week. This is very important to me. Tell me quickly. Time is of the essence.
When coffee making version is released, there's more features I'd like to see (in no particular order):
Cleaning Ironing Self drive AI Virtual Reality etc Thank you!
 

We've been "bearing with you" for quite literally 4 years for a planned feature. This is absurd.
If I didn't give a rats about Affinity Designer (or Serif in general) I wouldn't be here badgering you, but I do care. It's not only impossible to stop using Adobe products for missing features like this, it's also impossible to genuinely recommend to serious users.

Hi there,
I think it would be a big step forward for Affinity Designers UX if all panels work in the same way.
Currently, the user needs to open a context menu to rename or delete a color in a palette, style, icon, etc. All these operations should be more directly accessible and it should be possible to apply all commands applicable to a group of panel objects, eg the ability to delete all selected colors.
In my view, this is very important because it is possible to quickly fill panels with objects, for example to import colors from the document. Therefore, it should also be possible to quickly delete unnecessary objects from the panels or edit them differently (move, rename, delete, group, etc.)
For example, layers can be renamed inline. The user can select multiple layers. They can be moved by dragging, they can be reordered, grouped, and they can be deleted all at once. This way, layers can be used in a very structured way. Obviously, the complete functionality is already implemented for the layer panel. 
Why not reuse (or refactor) all other panels containing lists of objects of the same type, so they work similar to layers. This way, the user would be able to structure his palettes, his symbols, and so on.
 

I'm coming back to see if there had been any progress on this issue. But no.
You have limited resources, right, but also wrong priorities I'm afraid. This is perplexing to me. You are probably catering to your existing user base, but you should understand that adding basic functionality would expand that user base significantly.
Anyway, still on AI CS6.

+1 and then some. Joined the forum just to post this.
I downloaded the trial version of Designer and within a short space of time I knew it was a good enough product to buy (especially on sale). During the trial I just created my own documents and played around with the different tools. I was impressed.
After installing the purchased version, the very first document I opened up was an existing document I had been working on in Ai, a map from a GIS program. Went to try and "select by lineweight" and realised I couldn't. Nor by color, or or any other attribute. Ain't no way I can click-select thousands of objects by hand! I am not a programmer, and have been blown away by what your team has done at this price point, but this feature just seems like a very simple sort and select algorithm to implement even in a rudimentary form? I agree that basic functionality like this is an absolute must for any production or even casual environment and am surprised and dismayed to find it absent even after years of asking. 

+1 for me too. I purchased Designer several months ago, and find it very difficult to work without this feature. If I am creating my own work from scratch I can work around it, but not when dealing with files created by other software. For example: deleting or restyling the roads on a map, restyling the data points or grid an infographic, or setting up artwork for laser cutting (which uses different colors and fills to tell the machine what to do).

Hi fellow Affinity users.  Having been confined to the house during the Covid pandemic I have taken the opportunity to update the Designer PDF help file to version 1.9  There have been numerous feature additions in this version so you may benefit from updating.  I hope you find it useful.
I have attached a lower resolution copy of the PDF version of the Affinity Designer IPad apps built in Help file directly to this post. See below. (I have also attached a less compressed (higher resolution) copy's Dropbox “link” to a PDF version). 
You can open the PDF file in a reader or iBook allowing you to view and search the help file while working on a document in Affinity Designer. All links within the document should be working.
I hope you find it as useful as I do.
Please note that this PDF is not in any way supported by Affinity, nor are they responsible for any errors or omissions,  so please do not refer any errors or omissions in the Document to Affinity. Every attempt has been made (by me) to ensure the content is an accurate representation of the built in Help file, however some errors 'may' have slipped through .
I will  endeavour to keep it up to date (at least for a little while) . When Publisher comes out I may redo the layout (Pages is a little limited in the area of indexing).
My Dropbox account is basic and limits daily bandwidth, if you experience a problem downloading just try again next day.
Affinity Designer Help File 1.9.1 pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c2ga6xfx26uhrs8/Affinity%20Designer%20Help%20File%201.9.1.pdf?dl=0
Enjoy
Dave 
Direct link (10mb file size version) linked below:
Affinity_Designer_Help_File_1.9.1.zip

Illustrator has a very handy eraser tool that erases parts of a selected vector while keeping it vectorized.
Small video attached of how it works, super convenient and would be a really awesome addition to Affinity.

Vector Eraser.mov

Exactly. It's not just about circles. Or icons. Far from it.
Because although it's not traditionally been called that, being so basic a feature, stroke weight is really just an effect rendered at output.  Effects don't cut it for anything requiring actual path geometry.
Ordinary Boolean path operations (subtraction, union, intersection, exclusion, etc.)—required for all kinds of common drawing constructs—are all based on the actual path geometry, not on the merely visual appearance of a stroke weight.
Anything destined for physical reproduction via NC cutters, plotters, routers, etc., also must be actual paths that the tool follows, not just appearances painted on your monitor or rasterized by a RIP.
We all want more sophisticated and functional vector-based brushes in drawing programs. Those constructs and their interfaces are entirely program-specific proprietary. But we all also have to transfer our vector-based artwork to other programs. So such features are pretty much useless if artwork employing those features cannot be reliably normalized to basic paths that survive export to common exchange formats. Having to resort to rasterization in order to reliably keep shape is not acceptable.
Back when drawing program first started acquiring the ability to "convert" text to paths, the differentiating factor was this: Some programs (properly) did it by actually accessing the outlines contained in the font. Others didn't. As I recall, one example was Quark XPress. At the time it was the "standard for professional quality; the industry leader" (i.e., all that jazz Adobe devotees like to say about Illustrator nowadays). But its first conversion of text to paths was hideous until corrected.
That's similar in principle to the now expected quality of "outlining" stroke weights. One of the first things experienced vector graphics users check when evaluating a new program is the quality of expanding strokes and other effects. If it results in excess nodes and visible changes in the shape, it is a very poor implementation and can be a deal-breaker if not soon rectified. It is a very serious problem in Affinity Designer, but I believe the developers have acknowledged it and probably planned for addressing it.
JET

I certainly hope so. Affinity Designer's inadequacy here is probably the biggest issue that keeps me using Illustrator for most work.

I know I don't. What I favor is something that removes the redundancy of ordinary old fashioned arrowheads and more modern related features (vector brushes, symbols) treated as separate features, but that is more powerful than both.
And as a technical illustrator, I assure you, I fully understand the need for traditional arrowheads. But they don't have to be implemented as the kind of limited feature they historically have been in other programs. Often, that kind of archaic treatment is just kept for backward compatibility with previous versions. That is one area where Affinity should have the luxury of moving beyond conventional wisdom.
JET