Pencil Tool Auto-Merge

[ChristiduToit]

It would be great to have an auto-merge/unite feature for the Pencil Tool in Designer. Working in vector can often result in hundreds (or even thousands) of layers and potentially unnecessary individual curves, so being able to have them automatically merge as you draw would be an incredible time-saving and workflow-streamlining feature.

 

I think that having an option (ideally placed in the Context Toolbar for the Pencil Tool) to "Auto-Merge" as you draw would be great.
A good example of this would be Adobe Illustrator's Blob Brush Tool, where the strokes are automatically expanded and and merged with other strokes that have the same style/fill.
Obviously Designer's Brush Tool isn't purely vector (i.e. the brushes are often based on raster textures and can't be expanded/outlined), so i think the Pencil Tool would be the perfect candidate for something like this.
This would give vector illustrators, who like to draw by hand, an option to keep their layer stack tidy - almost as if they were drawing on a raster layer.

I've also had to send simplified files to clients for screen printing, and trying to manually find, select, and unite a thousand+ vector curves is not a fun time for any user (or their computer) - I've actually had Designer freeze and crash on me a few times while attempting this due to the volume of layers I was trying to merge. It would be much more efficient to have the option to do this from the get-go.