Designer - Arranging many SVG files into one large SVG file

[richardmtl]

Hi! I have several hundred (~500) different SVG files, all square icons with designs on them. I'd like to arrange them all in one big document, with an equal amount of space between them, so that I can print it as a poster. Other than doing it manually and copying/pasting each icon into the "master" document, is there any way I can somehow script it or just open all the SVG files at once and tell Designer "Combine and arrange these"? Also, is it even possible for me to add that many nodes to one document without crashing my computer? I have a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 with 16GB RAM. 

[firstdefence]

I doubt any route you take in Affinity Designer would be easy, obviously setting a document size and a grid to match would be a helper then...

1. Import the SVG’s in rows/columns, so if ten SVG’s fit a row, import ten SVG's
2. Select the bottom SVG in the layer stack and place it at the first grid square on a row/column and the top SVG in the layer stack on the last grid square 
3. Select all the SVG and use Auto distribute would seem the logical method.

The Photo collage makers like TurboCollage don’t support vector files like SVG else it would have been a very simple job in that app.

[Joachim_L]

Initially I thought using XnView's Contact Sheet feature would be a good idea to produce at least a PDF. But for me it produces only broken PDFs on Windows. Maybe this is working for everybody else?

[richardmtl]

Thanks everyone; I don't know Javascript, unfortunately!

 

Any idea if attempting this has the potential to cause problems with my laptop or not (ie, running out of memory or crashing)? I guess I won't know for sure until I try.  

[richardmtl]

Nope, all pure SVG! Excellent news, thank you!