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Posted

Hello,

I'm pretty new to these Serif products. Yesterday I watched one of the [excellent] tutorials on Designer 2. I noticed a lot of layers on the right side of the screen. So, just now, I've gone into Designer, and I've created three simple objects—a square, a circle, and a rotated square. And, yes, there were three layers created. So, being used to Adobe's products, Illustrator, and Designer, this kind of blows me away. Could someone explain the philosophy behind this? I'm not saying it's terrible. It just really intrigues me. It would seem that one would end up with lots and lots of layers. I'm used to everything being on the same layer until told otherwise.

So, I'm all ears.

Cheers and thanks,

Peter

 

Posted

Vector illustration software typically shows all vector objects in the layers stack and layers are treated like groups of vector objects anyway. In illustrator if you hit the little triangle to expand a layer then you'll see all the objects in the layer.

For whatever reason, Affinity just doesn't default to creating a new layer to put objects into when you start adding them. but if you hit the new layer button you can drag your objects in there. You can also drag layers into another layer.

Not sure why they didn't default create a new layer when you start adding objects, but I guess it's because objects aren't required to be in a layer (the layers are more like groups, except for pixel layers.)

It does seem to me like they ought to just give you a default layer in a new document though.

slice2.png.cb7417e51279952dd5c1adc42860264d.pngpRiNt! mOnKeY! 🖨️🙊
💻Lenovo Legion 5 Pro*, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H, 2300 Mhz, 14 Core, 32GB DDR5-4800, nVidia RTX 3070 Ti 8GB, Windoze 11 💻
*Sometimes gets used for something other than games.

 

Posted
1 hour ago, Saxon Bastard said:

It does seem to me like they ought to just give you a default layer in a new document though

As you have already written:

1 hour ago, Saxon Bastard said:

objects aren't required to be in a layer

That's why there's none in a blank document.

3 hours ago, PeterBBailey said:

the philosophy behind this?

Every object is a layer. That's why you can drag objects into other objects to use either one for clipping or crop masking.
Heck, even Designer artboards are both layers and objects at the same time, they can have attributes, any shape, can be nested, stacked, grouped, whatever. A group is a layer, too.

Having worked with Illustrator – and before that with Freehand – for almost three decades, I genuinely enjoy this Affinity flexibility. :) 
Don't know about the CC versions as I stopped at CS5, but Illustrator's Layers palette was always a major p.i.t.a. to work with.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

Posted

Yea, to summarize, the philosophy is:

1) Everything is an object

2) Objects can all have parents and children

3) Nothing is a "special" type of object that can only have parents or only have children

So really what you have is an object tree.

So then a term like "layer" is really just a descriptive term for "object that has children" rather than some special thing with special implementation.

Programmers and CAD users are used to this because they need relatively deep trees of objects to stay organized.

So with something like this:

image.png.e2db8fab08af5973a0b5cb9fbb128c9f.png

The only thing "special" about any of these objects is whether they also have their own content such as a bitmap, vector, or are just containers for other objects. But they can all "contain and be contained".

slice2.png.cb7417e51279952dd5c1adc42860264d.pngpRiNt! mOnKeY! 🖨️🙊
💻Lenovo Legion 5 Pro*, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H, 2300 Mhz, 14 Core, 32GB DDR5-4800, nVidia RTX 3070 Ti 8GB, Windoze 11 💻
*Sometimes gets used for something other than games.

 

Posted
9 hours ago, Saxon Bastard said:

So then a term like "layer" is really just a descriptive term for "object that has children" rather than some special thing with special implementation.

There is the generic "(Vector) Layer" type of layers which by itself doesn't have any objects. Those can be created in ADe and APu but not in APh. They can be contained, but – at least in v1, I didn't check what has changed in v2 yet – they don't necessarily support all clipping or crop masking combinations both ways like an object layer does.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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