Unsexy Enhancements for Sexy Workflow - Affinity 1.8 - A Wishlist

[Dave Vector]

After using Affinity products professionally for quite some time and observing the development team’s patience and openness to new ideas on the forums, I have a few “unsexy” suggestions to enhancements to take the tedium out of repetitive tasks and keep designers organized.

I am truly impressed with Affinity’s products.  In gratitude for that, I am inspired to create this Wishlist with some new ideas, and to chime in with some support for the classic, already-suggested ones.  Thanks for reading/listening!

Most of these suggestions can span all the affinity desktop products some are Designer specific.

 

1.      Organize Assets, Swatches, Brushes, Style Libraries with an edit mode, using an interface like the the "Presets Manager" in Shapes, to allow for re-arranging, renaming, moving between categories.

2.       Stoke Pressure Profiles can be saved on an application level. Organize and manage, with an interface like the "Presets Manager" in Shapes.  It’s all about efficiency, and not having to reinvent the wheel (stroke!) every time.

 

3.       Layers Panel – Select objects and groups and rename them with a multi-rename tool.  Instantly get organized so you and even other people can understand the layer groups and objects in your Affinity document.  Interface would allow the user to add a numerical counter as a prefix or suffix when renaming.  Handy before using Export Persona to create some basic naming conventions.

 

4.       Sort Layer Groups or artboards in the Layers Panel alphabetically, ascending, descending.  Yes, it will change the arrangement order, but properly organized groups can make complex file layers much easier to navigate. Handy for PDF Exporting where the order of pages depends upon the artboard order.

5.       Save selection sets that can select items spanning multiple artboards and also within groups. Often similar objects need to be adjusted or moved, but they are on multiple artboards or nested in other functional groups.  This can quickly solve that problem.

 

6.       Select by object trait (stroke color, stroke thickness, fill colour).  A handy way to quickly select and adjust objects with similar properties.  Otherwise selecting these can be a nightmare in complicated projects.

 

7.       Select and replace non global identical colours. Does your client want all the red elements blue?  What would they look like in teal or taupe?  Play rapidly to your heart’s content.

 

8.       Search Assets Panel ACROSS BOTH categories and subcategories, results displayed as filtered choices.  Do you have multiple categories/libraries and need to find the right icon fast?  This can save you time.  Currently a search has to be made within each asset category, which can take some time if you have multiple asset categories.

 

 9.      Handy Show Grid checkbox in Isometric Studio Panel.  True, you can use a keyboard shortcut, but it would be nice if this button was upfront.  Handy when you are working in Isometric view you have to turn on and off the grid to see the artwork uncluttered.  Chances are you have the panel open to constantly switch planes anyways…

I hope this helps to add votes for the unsexy underdog features. 😊

[Dave Vector]

I am hoping someone from Serif can comment on these ideas, perhaps let me know; are there plans to implement any of these ideas in 1.9 or 2.0?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

Cheers,

Dave.

[softsound]

These look like good ideas, getting organized libraries would be really really nice.

[Jowday]

On 5/11/2020 at 4:39 PM, Dave Vector said:

After using Affinity products professionally for quite some time and observing the development team’s patience and openness to new ideas on the forums, I have a few “unsexy” suggestions to enhancements to take the tedium out of repetitive tasks and keep designers organized.

I am truly impressed with Affinity’s products.  In gratitude for that, I am inspired to create this Wishlist with some new ideas, and to chime in with some support for the classic, already-suggested ones.  Thanks for reading/listening!

Most of these suggestions can span all the affinity desktop products some are Designer specific.

1.      Organize Assets, Swatches, Brushes, Style Libraries with an edit mode, using an interface like the the "Presets Manager" in Shapes, to allow for re-arranging, renaming, moving between categories.

2.       Stoke Pressure Profiles can be saved on an application level. Organize and manage, with an interface like the "Presets Manager" in Shapes.  It’s all about efficiency, and not having to reinvent the wheel (stroke!) every time.

3.       Layers Panel – Select objects and groups and rename them with a multi-rename tool.  Instantly get organized so you and even other people can understand the layer groups and objects in your Affinity document.  Interface would allow the user to add a numerical counter as a prefix or suffix when renaming.  Handy before using Export Persona to create some basic naming conventions.

4.       Sort Layer Groups or artboards in the Layers Panel alphabetically, ascending, descending.  Yes, it will change the arrangement order, but properly organized groups can make complex file layers much easier to navigate. Handy for PDF Exporting where the order of pages depends upon the artboard order.

5.       Save selection sets that can select items spanning multiple artboards and also within groups. Often similar objects need to be adjusted or moved, but they are on multiple artboards or nested in other functional groups.  This can quickly solve that problem.

6.       Select by object trait (stroke color, stroke thickness, fill colour).  A handy way to quickly select and adjust objects with similar properties.  Otherwise selecting these can be a nightmare in complicated projects.

7.       Select and replace non global identical colours. Does your client want all the red elements blue?  What would they look like in teal or taupe?  Play rapidly to your heart’s content.

8.       Search Assets Panel ACROSS BOTH categories and subcategories, results displayed as filtered choices.  Do you have multiple categories/libraries and need to find the right icon fast?  This can save you time.  Currently a search has to be made within each asset category, which can take some time if you have multiple asset categories.

 9.      Handy Show Grid checkbox in Isometric Studio Panel.  True, you can use a keyboard shortcut, but it would be nice if this button was upfront.  Handy when you are working in Isometric view you have to turn on and off the grid to see the artwork uncluttered.  Chances are you have the panel open to constantly switch planes anyways…

I hope this helps to add votes for the unsexy underdog features. 😊

All excellent and well-presented suggestions - they would be very much appreciated as fillers in coming releases together with big new features.  

[k_au]

Yes, these are all sensible improvements. I've been looking for some better AfDes style management too. Things I have been missing:

• Select more than one style, so you can bulk delete them 
• duplicate styles, edit existing styles

 

BTW, a way to "select same" is coming... ☺️

More discussion on that topic:  https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/793-ade-select-same-color-fill-stroke-appearance/

 

[Oval]

37 minutes ago, k_au said:

More discussion

a tiny discussion on 24 pages, startet in 2014  

[k_au]

5 minutes ago, Oval said:

a tiny discussion on 24 pages, startet in 2014  

Hehe, it would be funny if it weren't so sad 😶 
I do feel happy about the recent announcement that they / @MattP are working on this.
Of course the question is, when will it be ready? It's healthier to not get too excited too early...

[Sabina Beg]

5 hours ago, k_au said:

Hehe, it would be funny if it weren't so sad 😶 
I do feel happy about the recent announcement that they / @MattP are working on this.
Of course the question is, when will it be ready? It's healthier to not get too excited too early...

I 100% agree. I am leading the transition to Affinity at my firm and until this tool is in place that effort is completely dead in the water. @MattP I can't stress how important and critical this feature is for my firm and anyone working in the AEC industry, when it comes to adopting Affinity. We are taking PDFs created out of Revit, Rhino and AutoCAD and we need this functionality to quickly organize the hundreds, if not thousands, of lines and fills into layers to produce graphics, rendering floor plans, diagrams etc. 

[Dave Vector]

@Sabina Beg

On 5/18/2020 at 6:08 PM, Sabina Beg said:

I 100% agree. I am leading the transition to Affinity at my firm and until this tool is in place that effort is completely dead in the water. @MattP I can't stress how important and critical this feature is for my firm and anyone working in the AEC industry, when it comes to adopting Affinity. We are taking PDFs created out of Revit, Rhino and AutoCAD and we need this functionality to quickly organize the hundreds, if not thousands, of lines and fills into layers to produce graphics, rendering floor plans, diagrams etc. 

I appreciate that feedback.  There are often many repetitive tasks that, with a bit of automation can make them way less tedious.  I too often have to pick apart someone else's Legacy PDF or Ai file to resurrect some data for a client project.  It happens more often than one would think!

 

[lepr]

On 5/18/2020 at 7:47 PM, k_au said:

Hehe, it would be funny if it weren't so sad 😶 
I do feel happy about the recent announcement that they / @MattP are working on this.
Of course the question is, when will it be ready? It's healthier to not get too excited too early...

Definitely don't get excited. There was a time when the 2015 statement was recent, and look at the progress we've seen on that front since then - not one millimetre.