Selecting Layers/Groups in V2

[Guntram]

I have a question about working with layers in the new Affintiy Designer version 2.

As you can see in the two videos, in the first version of Affinity Designer it was possible to select groups with one click and move them completely. If you wanted to select the inner elements, this was done by clicking "in" several times.

In version 2 of Affinity Designer it is now the case that if you click on an element that is in a group, ONLY this element is selected i.e. if you want to move the whole group, it is totally annoying, for this you apparently now always have to select the group directly in the layer overview (user unfriendly as in PS!) and no longer directly on the artboard.

Now the question about this:
Is there a setting you have to set to make this work like in Affintiy Designer V1?
or else
Is there a shortcut/key combination that you can press so that the complete group is selected and can be moved together and not ALWAYS the individual elements of the group?
or
Is this a so-called new "feature" (more of a BUG to me!) of version 2? If so, this would be a negative development from a user-friendly point of view!

With a kind greeting from a user of AD/AF for almost eight years...

[Old Bruce]

What is the Green circle on the mouse clicks in the top video and why is it missing in the bottom video?

[voom]

I tried this and V2 selects the whole group when clicking an item of the group in the workspace, and with Ctrl pressed it selects the individual item within that group that is clicked. 

[MEB]

Hi @Guntram,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Select the group in the Layers panel then in the context toolbar untick Allow selection to consider items inside a group in the context toolbar (it's the only button you ahve selected before the Convert to Curves button). It should then behave as in version 1.

[voom]

I think this is rather a response to the threadstarter...

It is good to know, though, that both options are there and easily accessible

[MEB]

@voom, yes I was addressing Guntram question/issue. My apologies.
Post fixed.

[der.guen]

On 11/30/2022 at 7:07 PM, Old Bruce said:

What is the Green circle on the mouse clicks in the top video and why is it missing in the bottom video?

That's a halo effect of the Screencsasttool "ishow“ - and in the first video i didnt activate it before ....
so it didnt had any influence of the handling in V2!

[der.guen]

On 11/30/2022 at 7:48 PM, MEB said:

Hi @Guntram,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Select the group in the Layers panel then in the context toolbar untick Allow selection to consider items inside a group in the context toolbar (it's the only button you ahve selected before the Convert to Curves button). It should then behave as in version 1.

Found it and nailed it :)
#thx

[Arion]

This doesn't change the behaviour for me when editing pdf Plans made years ago on Archicad. How can I reinstall V1?

[Arion]

For me it doesn't behave as in V1 and that brings huge problems when dealing with PDFs from Archicad with thousands of vector lines to modify. And I cannot open a afpub V2 with Affinity publisher V1...

[stek]

Thanks for pointing out where this setting is. I've been looking for ages. It is not in an intuitive place. It should be in the main Settings, or as part of the Layers panel dropdown, or in the Selection menu. Having to select a single object (not even a group) to be able to see and change settings for all groups is really bad design.

BTW - the UI has changed since Admin/Staff posted the answer. The 2.1 context toolbar shows 2 settings: a checkbox for Auto-select and next to it a dropdown with choices Default, Objects, Groups.

• Leave Autoselect checked - if you uncheck it then you cannot select objects on the artboard by clicking on them, only by dragging.
• Set the dropdown to Default to re-install V1 behaviour of selecting Groups by default rather than their contents. If you set this to Groups, then you cannot select single objects on the artboard by clicking on them, you have to drag a selection marque.

 

I agree with the OP that this is a very counterintuitive and difficult to use design. I have been using Affinity products for many years professionally and loved them for their well-thought out interface and processes. But v2.1 has introduced so many unintuitive features and changes I am now for the first time getting frustrated with the software - just like with Adobe!  And bugs! lots of bugs in 2.1 (eg. exporting transparent PNGs is totally broken).

Also, how do I downgrade to 2.0 from 2.1? Affinity used to provide access to download any version of their software but they appear to have removed that useful feature and all I can see to download now is the latest version -  which is soooo broken! I want to downgrade to 2.0 please!