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I'm used to Serif DrawPlus, so I tried drawing arrows with the pen tool before realising that the shape tool was suitable. Unfortunately, it seems difficult to draw arrows consistently, particularly to get the arrow heads the same. So I can see that two arrows whose properties I have tried to match, don't. I know, I thought, I'll create a style! Tried that, can't see any confirmation that one has been created or any way of retrieving a saved one. Harrumph!

I'd love to have a way to convert a vector line (which might not be a solid) to a shape. A good example is thickening text, but needing just the final outside shape, not a stroked line. The best case scenario for this is if the function only created the outside shape if the center is filled, or the shape is closed. Otherwise, you end up deleting a bunch of points on the inside. That's not the end of the world, but it would be great to not have to do that. In the attached example, you'd get the outer stroke of this 'T' and nothing else. (sorry if it's already possible and I missed it. I can't seem to find any way to do this) Thanks! AD is AMAZING and saves me from the hell of AI.

Hello. I made abstract deer with triangles. When i try to join shapes (triangles) into one with Operations: Add I get following problem which can be seen on screenshot 2. Is there any other way to join shapes without getting problem/loosing shapes i made. Thank you in advance!

Hi everybody, I don’t know how you feel about this matter, but there is one annoying aspect when drawing shapes that become very small in one dimension, for instance, rectangles having at least one very short side. And this is the disappearing of the middle handle at small zoom levels. You will have to zoom to make this handle appear again, but by doing so, you will often lose the overview of your design. So you will have to stretch your shape a bit, zoom out, look at the entire canvas, zoom in, make further adjustments, zoom out … well, this is somewhat annoying. So what about adding “smart shape handles” that would provide a solution to this problem? I imagine them working like so: when the middle handle of a shape’s bounding box disappears at a certain zoom level and you approach this bounding box with the cursor at the respective side, an additional control area, as shown in my mockup, will pop out, presenting all three handles. As long as the cursor is inside that control area, the three handles would be visible, and the area would collapse, as soon as the cursor would leave it. What do you think? Alex

Hey! Hope you all are doing well! First Thanks for all that you all do and are working towards! Thanks for providing the community with a great and constantly improving program. After using Affinity Designer, there are a few things from utilizing a tablet and the program that I think would benefit user experience and workflow. - Tablet Options When utilizing a tablet. Having some availability options to change and set keys with the tablets through the app would be great. Also, shape/pressure options within the application as well. I suppose more enhanced support when it comes to tablets. - Expanding stroke. When utilizing this, it seems to over compensate on the strokes causing bigger unproportioned (To the original stroke) shapes and makes it difficult to combine/merge the layers to one full layer. -Dividing shapes. When using this, If there could be an option with how many duplicates it makes. It divides and cuts out all the parts, but it does it by doubling up the parts and i end up having to shift around layers to get it to its original state to start working again. Hope this one makes sense. Ill attach examples. Again thanks for what you all do and are developing there at Serif Labs!

I would greatly appreciate an option to import Photoshop Custom Shapes (*.csh) in Affinity.

I think I may have mentioned this before without getting any feedback, but I would really like to have a tab/place to save symbol/shapes we create. A lot of software programs have Shape Libraries where they can save and categorize shapes. This makes it so easy to grab a shape and insert into the picture and save a shape we created while drawing a picture.

Currently use Apple Motion in conjunction with FCPX for video production and animation, and would love it if there was some way to export the vector data as Motion shapes. It's currently possible through Illustrator using a script, but I feel it'd help massively if I had this inside of Affinity Designer. Something similar to this video

I'm trying to create a hand drawn circled effect...like if you see something you like on paper and want to highlight it. this works great if you use a brush to outline an ellipse but the problem is I'd like the ends to touch...better yet if they could cross paths. How can I create this? Also, for when I want to leave a gap, how can I change the point when the brush starts and ends? e.g if I want the gap to be on the bottom or the left?

Hello everyone, new to the forum and have used Affinity Design in a very basic way for some time now, and I can't seem to figure out how to cut out part of a shape. I have 2 letters surrounded by a circle to make a logo, but want to cut out part of the circle so one of the letters has space around it. I have attached a picture with a circled "W" that shows what I want my logo to do where one part of the w doesn't connect to the circle. Then you will see my logo with 2 red circles where I want to separate the white circle from the end tail of the letter b. I am ignorant about a lot of the graphic design terminology so please forgive me. I just don't know what to do.

I created a shape (first a circle then I tried a square with same results) then clicked on transform to manually set the size. Once the measurements box opens I lose control of the main panels and am unable to close the measurements box. Had to reset the ipad both times. ipad pro 2017 fully updated ios 11 affinity beta

Hi, If you divide two overlapping shapes, you get three juxtaposing shapes (two shapes, and one other for the previous intersection). When you merge these back into one shapes in Adobe Illustrator, the merging is clean. But on Affinity designer, it creates a lot of points inside. https://i.imgur.com/e1hq0oB.gifv Is their a workaround for this ? Deleting this inside points manually take quite some time. Of course, the problem is even greater if you merge more shapes. Should I open a Feature Request ? Thanks for your help ! Note : I'm testing trial of Affinity Designer, (Win 10 x64), I'm pretty new to it.

Hi, When I divide two overlapping shapes, there is a thin blank line between the resulting shapes, showing they are not consecutive. There is a thin blank space between the shapes, and it is visible at export. https://i.imgur.com/wQhEXZK.gifv How to handle this problem ? Thanks for your support ! Related thread (but different): Merge two juxtaposing shapes after a divisions create a lots of inside points - Questions - Affinity | Forum

Can you change a shape type? For instance if I've created a circle, could I then change this to a square, thus keeping the same dimensions? If not I think this would be a good idea.

Hello Affinity team! I've had some problems with merging curves layers and in the result I asked this wonderful community for help. At first I thought I must be missing some tools and someone here will guide me to the light, but seems like it's the software that misses pretty important tool. Please, get familiar with the thread I started: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/46069-designer-simplifying-closing-single-curve/& Issues: - dividing curves when hitting "Add" - no easy solution to merging curve that overlaps itself 2 ideas emerged: - breaking curves in innocuous places and then hitting add, - creating rectangles in divided areas and then removing some of the nodes. It's something and working for now, but it's pretty time consuming, and for someone facing deadlines on the daily basis can be a deal breaker. Suggestion: - getting "Add" tool to merge singe curve that overlaps itself, - or creating another tool that will do so.

I'm about to pull my hair out. I just dropped a sizable chunk of change on this program only to have trouble doing the thing I need most: import vectors I drew on my iPad (in Autodesk Graphic) into a program that has the Combine Shapes feature. I've been exporting in both SVG and PDF format from Autodesk Graphic, and when I open it in Affinity, it's just a shape. If it's not possible to save paths in one program and open them in another, I'm probably going to put a hole through the nearest wall. PLEASE tell me this is somehow possible.

Hello, Simple request - when we chose text tool, mouse shows if we're about to make text area or simple text input. The same behaviour should come with shapes, For now users often have to make sure what shape we're gonna make.

Hi there! I need an advice in the following task: I want to have the exact same corner, that I have on the left side of this L-shape, on the inner (right) side of the shape. Can you provide a simple way to achieve this? Cheers, Robin.

They are pretty simple and fast to accomplish in Illustrator mainly due to Shape Builder tool. Anyone can upload a tutorial on this ?

Good day! Having played around with Affinity Designer the whole afternoon creating curves and shapes, I would like to share some thougths. - It often happens to me that I add a node accidentally, because it just takes a single click. I would prefer a double click instead of a single click for adding a node, which is something I do far less often than trying to select a curve or a node or dragging the path. - When deleting a node, the curve is distorted significantly. It would be great if you could apply an algorithm that tries to adjust the neighboring nodes such that the shape is preserved as much as possible without the deleted node. (I know that this is not possible exactly mathematically, but when adding a node and then deleting it again, I would expect to get back almost the same curve.) I often simplify curves by deleting nodes, for example when drawing with the pencil tool and the curve is a bit shaky and has too many nodes. But deleting the superfluous nodes does not produce a smoother curve, rather it ends up more like a series of nearly straight lines. Or I try to place a new node along the curve in a better location and then delete its neighbour (effectively moving a node along the path). As it is now, this always requires me to restore the path to its previous shape. - In the help I read this: "The curve will automatically reshape because of the deleted node, but you can retain the curve's original geometry by pressing Alt+Delete key instead." This does not work on my Version (1.5.3 on Windows, Swiss German Keyboard Layout). Alt+Delete does not do anything. In my opinion, the current behaviour (automatically reshape) is not useful. Make a shape preserving node deletion the default. Then Alt-Delete could be used for something else, for example to create a straight-line segment. - While talking about keyboard shortcuts: There are some keyboard short cuts that do not work for me. I have a Swiss German Layout. For example, the [ and ] keys do not work. On my Keyboard, I need to type them with the AltGr key, which is the same as Alt+Ctl. This gets confused with Keyboard shortcuts like Ctl+Alt+[ which I cannot press at all. When trying to redefinine a function to [ and ] in the shortcut editor, it is recognized as AltGr-ü and AltGr-¨, which is insofar correct as it is the typed key combination, but it does not work. Keys defined this way show no reaction. (Letters and numbers do work, though) - The "Smooth curve" function sometimes produces unpleasant results. For example, I draw a circle and convert it to a path. This gives me a perfectly smooth path with 4 nodes. After clicking "Smooth curve" I get a path with 12 nodes. While I admit that it is still smooth, it goes as against my experience that the smoothest paths I create are usually those with the fewest nodes. Also, when drawing a line with the pencil tool which seems a bit shaky, "Smooth curve" will just add more nodes! - A "Simplify curve" function might be more useful. Successively reducing the node count while trying to keep the overall shape as much as possible. Either apply it on the whole curve or a selection of adjacent nodes. - When designing free form curves, a good strategy is to place the majority of nodes so that their handles extend vertically or horizontally. (This trick I learned from typographers https://theagsc.com/blog/tutorials/so-whats-the-big-deal-with-horizontal-vertical-bezier-handles-anyway/ ) It would be great if there was a way to restrict the handles to these directions. In the help I learned that by pressing Shift, the directions are constrained to multiples of 45°, but it seems this only works when laying out the curve with the pen tool. When editing it with the Node tool, pressing shift just fixes the handle direction (which is also useful). Nevertheless, I really like the program! Best regards, Andreas

I need the ability to draw across multiple artboards. Currently, even if I arrange artboards next to each other, when I draw a shape across two or more artboards I can only see the part of the shape that fits in the artboard the shape was started in. The same thing happens with text. In the picture I am including I drew a rectangle across two artboards but it only shows on one. I also wrote test across two artboards but it also shows on only one. I am also requesting a way to set up the spacing vertically and horizontally between two or more artboards. For example, set the artboards to be right next to each other at 0" or to be separated by a specific value such as .5" or 3pxls or anything like that.

Hi there, I'm trying to create a simple speech box with a dragged out triangle for the "Speech" bit, so I've basically got a rectangle with a triangle attached - how do I get rid of the line where the two join so I have effectively one image with a bit blown out a bit in a triangle shape rather than what looks like two shapes stuck together?

Hello out there Learning a new program isn't always that easy, but sometimes you hit a brick wall and voila: I need to ask you out there. :) I can't figure out how to convert a line into an object (or shape), to further use this geometry to subtract it from another object (see attached pictures). You can convert shapes to curves, but not the other way round? The thing is, its easier to draw a line, adjust the thickness (stroke) to your liking and then convert this into a shape to, let's say, subtract it from something. Since I've stumbled upon the fact, that I can't precisely arrange things in AD, due to some odd snapping behaviour (or my lack of understanding these). thx for any help, Bo

This may be the dumbest question you answer all day/year/century, but I'm new to Affinity -- and, really, the whole photoshop/design world. Without further ado, here it is: Is a hot dog a sandwich? In Affinity Designer, how do I place a picture into a (badass) shape I've created? Any help is much appreciated!

Say an image you open in AP has a random line, maybe the border of a sign with perspective. How do you determine the angle of that line? (Or could be a line on an object in AD also, BTW). I thought about drawing a Pen Tool line on top of the inherited line but that doesn't help because AP puts a bounding box (horizontally) around your new line and declares the new line to be horizontal. I also thought about using the rulers to do Trig calcs but there must be an easy AP method, right? In PS you use the Measurer Tool. Or what if I wanted to draw a line at 20 degrees? How would I do that? One potential solution is use Shift to draw the line horizontal, then select the line and rotate it until it reads 20 deg in the Tip or in the Transform pallet. What do you think? AP for Win 10