Set background / stroke of Text Frames

[Flooski]

Hi,

I would like to use Affinity Designer to create block diagrams of systems (similar to Visio/diagrams.net, but with the power of Affinity Designer behind it).

At the moment, to do this, I need to manage both the text frame and a duplicate shape behind it, as text frames can't have their fill or stroke set.

It would be great to be able to treat it as one object (similar to Visio/diagrams.net) rather than wrangle two objects per conceptual box.

[carl123]

36 minutes ago, Flooski said:

as text frames can't have their fill or stroke set.

@Flooski

Just so you are aware, Affinity Publisher can do that currently but not Designer

[fde101]

Furthermore, if you create a rectangle and convert it to a text frame in Designer, it will lose its fill and stroke, but if you do the same in Publisher it will not.

Serif went out of their way to prevent you from doing this in Designer, meaning they seem to think this is and should remain a Publisher-only capability.

You can, on the other hand, assign a fill and stroke to a text frame in Publisher, then copy and paste it into Designer, and it will keep its fill and stroke.

[MEB]

Hi @Flooski,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
You can drag the text frame layer over the shape layer in the Layers panel to clip the text frame to the shape (or group them as an alternative) so they can be managed a a single object (the text frame doesn't need to have the same size as the shape). Clip below (this clip was recorded for another reply so a few things are a bit redundant but even so it may be useful):

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

Serif went out of their way to prevent you from doing this in Designer, ...

No, they haven't prevented anything in Designer. Text Frames, and the behavior of losing an object's stroke and fill when converting it to a Text Frame, existed in Designer long before Publisher existed.

When they created Publisher they added functions in this area (the Text Frame panel), and changed the default way of handling stroke/fill when converting objects to Text Frames.

They simply have chosen not to add the additional function in Designer. They did not need to "go out of their" way to do this. They would have had to do additional work (coding, testing, documentation) if they wanted the function to be in Designer, too.