Too May Layers

[NELCHAI]

I am a new user of Affinity concentrating on Designer.  "New" means that I bought the package of 3 in August.  I have not yet created with it.  Instead, I have been researching its functionality by buying/reading its books, watching videos, reading forums etc.  I am a professional designer building product for my own business and have been doing so for about 20 years.  I do not and will not use Adobe or any other software that uses a subscription model as I need the ability to access my previous work at any time regardless of whether my subscription is current, a corporate executive hiccups, etc.  

At first glance, my primary issue is going to be layer management.  My work often contains thousands - perhaps millions - of individual objects in each file.  I make digital calligraphy, cartography, and manuscript illumination for the homeschool market.  I currently produce files of more than 750 MB in size in Inkscape.  This size is common for my work.  Anyway, I see that everything in Affinity Designer gets its own layer.  

How can I best avoid wasting time managing that many assets?

So far, the closest forum activity I have found to my issue is the concept of a "global layering" system.  It appears that the topic is limited to issues posed by Affinity Publisher.

My method of work means that I need to have one layer - perhaps it is called a collection in Affinity as it is in blender - to hold thousands of individual objects.  I do not need to edit these assets as I create them.  [ EG a circle representing one of several hundred islands on a shoreline.  It represents an island - I do not need to assign a blend mode to it at this time, ]  My layer stack needs several - occasionally hundreds - of these collection layers.  For instance, If I create a political map for the USA, I need one collection for the USA, another for each state, each territory etc.  While I may need to apply a dissolve or blend mode to something on a collection layer at some point in the future, I do not need to do so now.  What I need is a way to manage my collection of assets now - and the ability to enhance them individually later if I want to.  What does affinity offer to accomplish this goal?

Please remember, I am a professional designer.  Every minute I waste = money out of my pocket.  While it may be possible to do a group function on a million assets and rename the layer they are grouped into - doing so is inefficient and not always accurate.  EG - it appears there is a preexisting issue with this software that items get put into sub layers etc without intent.  

So, in short, how are other professional designers using affinity's tools to manage their collections of objects in the layer stack?

As far as I can tell, this is the only limiter to my use of this software.  

As I sell my product, my customers will want to use something to view my files.  I would love to recommend Affinity - but I need to be using it myself to do so honestly.  When they buy my work - think of an educational slide on a digital blackboard - they will want to write on the image with a chalk board appropriate brush.  I found and purchased an excellent opportunity to do that in affinity.  The only problem I see is the availability of a collection system to manage the layer stack.  It seems this is standard in other software.  It should be standard here too.  Am I missing it?  Again - time is money -the solution needs to be efficient and effective.

[NotMyFault]

Hi, 

reading you priorities i’m a bit torn between 2 options.

1. Affinity provides all functionality you listed - theoretically.
2. As time is your by far most important priority, you may consider 3 factors that may rule out Affinity based on these specific priorities. This does not apply in general or with different weight factors:
   1. Affinity UI is different, and you need a learning curve some users experience as steep. Later you may find some workflows are far easier and faster vs. competitive apps. There is a huge fan base (including me) who swear on Affinity products (knowing it constraints and issues)
   2. Affinity lacks a few functions (e.g. shape builder), you may need workarounds or occasional use of other specialized apps
   3. Affinity has some open issues (like every software), but it could take weeks / month to be solved. Especially the windows platform version has far more unsolved bugs vs. MacOS version. Some users report even crashes, related to some specific use cases (e.g. using “symbols” having nested blur filter layers on windows)

So it’s up to you to at least invest some time to give it a try.

The by far most exciting  asset of Affinity is actually its exciting use community, active in this forums, always ready trying to help if you are in need of.

Edited October 21, 2021 by NotMyFault
Typos, missing “not”

[Fixx]

Grouping is what I do to keep layers palette tidy. I guess there are more sophisticated solutions for more complicated workflows but for my basic needs grouping is the thing.