Why is it soo difficult to select objects/forms/shapes in Affinity Designer

[kwaku]

Hi. I am Affinity Designer newbie. I am making a transition from adobe to Affinity. I love Affinity Designer so far but somethings are just too tricky and time consuming.

An Example, I am simply trying to select the lady with the laptop and it becomes a task and time consuming. I have attached making a selection in illustrator vs Affinity.

On illustrator, i simply click and it automatically groups them and makes it easy for selection.

I try the same thing on Affinity Designer and it is extremely difficult.  Why does the layers of the object expand automatically to curves,shapes, and so on? making it impossible to just make a selection? why do i have to keep selecting different parts? is there an easy way to make a selection?

 

 

[loukash]

2 hours ago, kwaku said:

Why does the layers of the object expand automatically to curves,shapes, and so on?

Because in Designer, you are actually opening the PDF stream that is embedded in an AI file. This is the only way how to actually edit an AI file outside Illustrator.
Whereas in AI, you are editing the native proprietary Illustrator document format.

If you save the AI file as PDF from Illustrator and then reopen that, it will likely behave similarly to what you're experiencing in Designer.

[prophet]

I do this regularly while making the transition to Affinity. The first 10 minutes after opening an old AI PDF are spent ungrouping, unclipping, regrouping, curve merging, splitting and recombining wayward text boxes, etc. I don't mind too much though. It's a bit zen re-familiarizing myself with all the components of a project.

[kwaku]

Thanks @loukash and @prophet I tried the AI pdf, as you suggested, still behaves the same way.. 😓

 

[loukash]

1 minute ago, kwaku said:

I tried the AI pdf, as you suggested, still behaves the same way

What I meant is this:

1. open the AI in Illustrator
2. Save a Copy as PDF (you will be warned that you may lose editability)
3. close the AI document
4. open the previously saved PDF document in Illustrator
5. you will likely see about the same document structure as if you'd open an AI document (respectively its embedded PDF stream) in Designer

In other words: This is how it works, and there are not many ways around it.
Coincidentally, it's been discussed in another thread earlier today: