Rename many layers, groups, or curves at the same time

[sheriffderek]

I would like to rename a bunch of paths to the same name. (because then when I export - I want to change those IDs to classes for some inline SVG CSS stuff).

I can select many layers with command and click /or with select > similar

https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Layers/selectEditLayers.html?title=Selecting and editing layers

but I do not see a way to rename all of those things.

In our case, I can't group them - because they are many paths away from each other - in a stacking order.

[GarryP]

Can you give us an example of how being able to rename multiple layers at the same time would be advantageous and what you do with those layers later on which the mass-renaming would help with?

[sheriffderek]

6 hours ago, GarryP said:

Can you give us an example of how being able to rename multiple layers at the same time would be advantageous and what you do with those layers later on which the mass-renaming would help with?

Plainly - "naming many layers at the same time" - is useful just by itself because you are doing something 1 time instead of many. You might have 20 "eyes" in your illustration of a jungle at night - and want to name them all "eye." Currently: you would (find the layer, double-click twice, and type "eye")*20.

Here is one of my use cases:

I have this illustration. I'm tasked with preparing it to be used for an SVG / where I'll be giving each path it's own --custom-property for dark mode and it may also be animated in some way. Affinities options for SVG export are another can of worms, but - I'd would like to select > similar fill (which will then highlight all of the layers with paths using that fill color) - and I'd like to name those layers. If I could right-click and just rename them all - that would be really fast. Other wise, clicking each one will remove the highlights - and I'll be doing the process many times.

In this situation, grouping them is not an option. And these layers must stay in this source order.

Does that help explain it?

[MikeTO]

One related Adobe shortcut that would be nice - if you are renaming a layer and press Tab instead of Enter, it's equivalent to pressing Enter and then start renaming the layer below it. Shift Tab goes to the layer above it. This makes it easier to rename multiple layers in succession. I don't think Affinity has an equivalent feature.

[Klababa]

Multi-rename function, like in total commander, would be good:

When I want to make a set of dozens of artboards with "blue" in name for export, duplicate them all, I would like to change the blue name to "red". For example, why multiple rename... 🙂

 

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Klababa said:

Multi-rename function, like in total commander, would be good:

When I want to make a set of dozens of artboards with "blue" in name for export, duplicate them all, I would like to change the blue name to "red".

FYI since this 2022 thread you replied to, Serif has since implemented the Tab and Shift+Tab approach to renaming layers so it's easy to rename multiple layers at once.

Once scripting is available it should be easy to do what you're asking but until then I recommend using Tab to move from layer to layer.

Cheers