Expand strokes not working

[LJSwanepoel]

Good day

This may not be a bug, but it is a little annoying.

5 things:

1. When I select multiple objects, I am unable to hold in Shift and click+drag the selection tool to deselect the objects I don't need. I have to click on the individual objects. This technique is time consuming and very inaccurate. It would be a huge timesaver and userfriendly to just select multiple objects with the click+drag, and using the Shift key to deslect multiple objects at once.

2. Expanding strokes. Apologies for comparing this to another design software. Expanding strokes in Adobe Illustrator is way easier. I can simply select all objects on the paste board, and expand the strokes, and only the objects that had strokes will have their strokes expanded. However, in Affinity Designer, even the objects that didn't have strokes somehow gets invisible expanded strokes, which creates unnecessary nodes, uses extra computer resources and causes more unnecessary time consuming effort. I have to go to each "unstroked" object and first delete all those invisible expanded strokes. This leaves me with less room for creativity and makes me less motivated to use Designer, because I know that is the struggle I'll have to go through.

3. Aligning objects. I'm pretty sure this is a bug. In the beginning, I was able to select my objects and then select the option of how I want to align them, such as "first selected," etc. When I select my object, those options are grayed out. Currently, I have to first apply my alignment, then the options become available. It's not working properly. Can you also perhaps create a shortcut for "key object" so that the child objects will align to the parent object?

4. For some reason Designer starts to lag when a single object has a lot of nodes. I'm used to using as little nodes as possible, but sometimes a complex object involves plenty nodes. In this case, the program gets laggy. I'm running a SSD drive, with 12Gb RAM, GeforceGT 640m 2GB, and i5 processor. Illustrator runs very smoothely on my computer, so not sure why Designer stuggles.

5. This can be a future request: "Offset path." So useful!

I look forward to your feedback and hopefully resolving these bugs in the near future.

Edited March 21, 2020 by LJSwanepoel
Added a feature request

[Sean P]

Hi LJSwanepoel

1. This is an issue that has now been fixed by development and will be resolved in the next release.

2. Could you attach a document with some objects that give you 'invisible expanded strokes'? Just tried this myself and didn't get any extra objects when using Expand Stroke on an object without a stroke.

3. This is something that has been raised with development, but is an intentional change. Essentially the previous behaviour would have had buttons enabled for modes that wasn't always applicable, so you have to first select an alignment mode before you can set its options.

4. Do you have an example file you could attach?

5. Any feature requests please post them here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/53-feedback-for-affinity-designer-on-desktop/

[lepr]

2. Invisible new shapes as a result of Expand Stroke are created when source objects have a non-zero width stroke and no stroke colour or fully transparent stroke colour. 
That result can be avoided by using a zero width stroke instead of an invisible non-zero width stroke when an object is to have no stroke. Stroke panel includes a No Line Style button for setting the stroke width to zero.
It seems reasonable for you to expect Expand Stroke to produce no new object from an invisible non-zero width stroke. Maybe the developers will implement that if you suggest it in the feedback forum for Designer.

5. That's being worked on at the moment. An impressive WIP demo was posted by a developer not long ago.