Better Preset / way of adding new artboards

[The3Emran]

Hi,

In my workflow, I pretty much use countless artboards, instead of just one document. Everything is great but there are some basic features that are missing. I just had to create this feedback as I have been wasting a lot of time manually transforming artboards since v1 rather than just being able to use the presets that are already baked into affinity, which is a shame:

1. The preset on context toolbar is mainly focused on digital UI/UX designers, which is useful, however anything but enough... what if we are also focusing on print designs, needing A4 A1 business card etc... I left a screenshot from the default presets below (extremely limited)
2. This brings me to the second issue, I tried to work around by changing the document set up, then using artboard tool -> picking as size document -> insert artboard. As you can see in the image attached, if the affinity document includes artboards, this option will be disabled and can not be changed after the initialisation. This is not the case for "one page" docs where we can freely change everything.
3. Better wishful way of adding new artboard:
   1. Why not show the user the window that is shown when we create a new file, with all the options available
   2. Also even better, why not treat each artboard like a separate entity with different colour profile etc rather than being stuck to the initial set up we pick. Unfortunately we cant event change the basics if the document includes artboard let alone each artboard having it's own attributes.

You might be asking why this is necessary, well I work on UI/UX and publishing aspects in my projects. So some artboards require digital set up, some require print set up. All and all would be nice to zoom in and out between various parts of designs. After all this is pretty much what the artboards were designed to do: "Artboards are discrete design areas...". Nonetheless even for someone who works on the print designs, the presets are pretty useless as they are all about mobile devices etc. not A1, A2, A4 et

 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, The3Emran said:

The preset on context toolbar is mainly focused on digital UI/UX designers, which is […]

… not really useful unless you actually want to design a UI…
So yes: Where can I add my own presets and delete the ones I'll never need?

1 hour ago, The3Emran said:

if the affinity document includes artboards, this option will be disabled and can not be changed after the initialisation.

From what I know, this is by design: a document can be either page based or artboard based. As soon as you have an artboard, you cannot have pages. Thus any page presets are useless.

To get the presets back, in the Layers panel move  all your objects outside the artboard(s), then delete the empty artboard(s). The document will be converted back to the page mode. 

1 hour ago, The3Emran said:

why not treat each artboard like a separate entity with different colour profile etc

Because an artboard is not a page, let alone a document. It's a layer object, something between a vector shape, a group, a layer, while also having a faint "aura" of a page when used in export or print context.
That's also why you can create an artboard from any vector shape you wish. Even from the Cat Tool… 
Layer menu > Convert Object [!] To Artboard

[The3Emran]

Fair enough, limitations make sense considering the underlying tech.

And you are right, affinity designer being anything but fit for purpose for UX 😂😂 I am not sure why I wrote it there. 🤦‍♂️

They can have my plus one for standalone UX app as well now you brought it up.

However there is a simple alternative fix, that is the affinity designer to also include paper sizes in the presets as well, alongside the device sizes. Such A4 A1 etc as a sub category. 
 

saves us drawing manually. 

[loukash]

40 minutes ago, The3Emran said:

there is a simple alternative fix, that is the affinity designer to also include paper sizes in the presets as well, alongside the device sizes.

+1000 to that!

[gw_westdale]

Has this died or is it being considered in 2.1 ?  A cascading menu for artboards that referenced the ones used for documents could be a real help and would allow addition of custom ones all in one place.

[walt.farrell]

31 minutes ago, gw_westdale said:

Has this died or is it being considered in 2.1 ? 

Certainly not for 2.1.

2.1 is "feature complete" at this point, and you can find all the features from the link at the top of the forum page. They're only making some bug fixes at this point.

[gw_westdale]

Thanks  Walt - I thought not-- currently out of country on laptop so no betas - I'd just started using artboards for something and came across this asymmetry

 

[Fabricio]

I would like if Affinity remember the last Artboards that I created, and put those on the presets. The chance That I will create a artboard with the same size that I created before is very hight