affinity designer Spiral Tool in Affinity Designer

[S1monSays]

3rd time in 2 days that I end up here because Affinity Designer lacks the most fundamental tools... absolutely unbelievable.

I just checked:

Aldus/Adobe Freehand MX (2002): spiral tool present
AI (CS 6): spiral tool is there
Corel Draw 2019: spiral too available
Rhino CAD: has spiral tool
Inkscape: yup, has a spiral tool

Affinity Designer V1.10.5 (end of 2022): NIX, NADA, NOTHING

Unbelievable. I'm slowly beginning to suspect that AD is optimized for the quick production of flashy eye candy but not for the professional development of user interfaces, diagrams, illustration, technical documentation or how-tos...

[Dan C]

Hi @S1monSays,

Just to let you know, I've moved your post to the Feedback section of the Affinity Forums - as it's better suited here.

Unfortunately our developers don't tend to comment on Feedback requests, but this will be taken into consideration by our team for a future update.

Equally, V1 of the Affinity apps are no longer receiving new feature updates, since we released Affinity V2 last year.
Therefore if this tool were to be implemented into Affinity, it would be in a future update of V2 or beyond.

I hope this clears things up.

[2ddpainter]

13 hours ago, S1monSays said:

Aldus/Adobe Freehand MX (2002): spiral tool present
AI (CS 6): spiral tool is there
Corel Draw 2019: spiral too available
Rhino CAD: has spiral tool
Inkscape: yup, has a spiral tool

You could add "VectorStyler" (Mac/Windows) to your list
it has this tool and many more that you might
also miss in AD.
(no Subscription too)

AD and VS work very well together
via the clipboard

[Frances Proctor]

You could also add Xara designer pro X to that list Sadly though theirs is part of their subscription and with out keeping up an increasingly expensive subscription you lose access to it    They implemented theirs as a shape tool  which would a great way for affinity to add it too!  Just imagine being able to drag a spiral on to your page and be able to quickly edit it with some of those special nodes!   And no subscription needed! 

[Alfred]

Serif DrawPlus (Windows only) has a Spiral Tool. 

[Frances Proctor]

There could be lots of uses for spirals from plant illustrations to Greek meanders to logo design 

[Boldlinedesign]

11 hours ago, 2ddpainter said:

You could add "VectorStyler" (Mac/Windows) to your list
it has this tool and many more that you might
also miss in AD.
(no Subscription too)

AD and VS work very well together
via the clipboard

Vectorstyler is indeed the best companion app to Designer in terms of covering as many tools and features as possible. Owning both means you don't have to waste time waiting for Affinity to catch up (if they would even attempt to since they are not trying to necessarily be a full featured vector app)

[Boldlinedesign]

6 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Unless you are working on iPad, in which case it is the other way round.

Not really because if you're working on an iPad, you're still very much limited by what Affinity Designer offers in terms of features and tools - you're only gaining mobility of use.
While Vectorstyler does not yet offer an iPad version, I'd much prefer a stable and feature rich desktop-only program like VS than one that has multiple platforms and a limited feature set

[S1monSays]

On 3/9/2023 at 11:13 AM, Dan C said:

Hi @S1monSays,

Just to let you know, I've moved your post to the Feedback section of the Affinity Forums - as it's better suited here.

Unfortunately our developers don't tend to comment on Feedback requests, but this will be taken into consideration by our team for a future update.

Equally, V1 of the Affinity apps are no longer receiving new feature updates, since we released Affinity V2 last year.
Therefore if this tool were to be implemented into Affinity, it would be in a future update of V2 or beyond.

I hope this clears things up.

Thanks & thanks for your patience.

I didn't expect developers to read my (or other people's rants "down here"). I am also aware that the world has moved on to V2.0 ... then again, all the "legacy" tools I used 10, 20 years ago had basic functionality (like the spiral, the cutting tool, a distribute function) that are nonexistent AD V1.9 which doesn't really make sense to me as - at least in my world - where you start with the basics and THEN add the bells and whistles. But having worked in marketing for 15+ years, I know that you need to sometimes need to be different so people are noticing you... so I re-installed Inkscape and Corel!Draw in parallel and fabri-cobbled together a "unique" workflow until I know whether I want to stick with Serif (I just might, as I really, really hate Adobe!).

[Bobby Henderson]

I've used a lot of those old vector graphics applications (still have a couple old Freehand Graphics Studio boxes). It might be nice to have a Spiral tool, particularly if the tool has a decent amount of options for users to define the tightness or looseness of the spiral loops. On the other hand I would probably be more likely to use a "twirl" warp tool to generate spiral effects on select pieces of existing vector artwork. It is possible for a vector "drawing" application to support both ideas.

The spiral tools in rival vector graphics applications typically draw out open paths in what appears like a stove top burner spiral. That kind of thing can be useful, but I usually need to do something additional to the path -such as apply a vector-based "brush" effect to it in Adobe Illustrator for the effect to really work well.

[2ddpainter]

@Bobby Henderson

could recommend to download and try the demo of Vectorstyler

[Bobby Henderson]

My "daily driver" vector applications are Adobe Illustrator CC and CorelDRAW (just did the 2023 upgrade on my workplace license). I have Affinity Designer on hand in case I receive any customer provided artwork created in that format. I'm not very familiar with VectorStyler, although it does look like it has a pretty impressive set of features.

[2ddpainter]

2 hours ago, Bobby Henderson said:

look like it has a pretty impressive set of features.

Indeed, this is the case.

My main vector graphics application was CorelDraw. I still have a
copy of CorelDraw 2021, I like the symmetry feature and of course
I have a copy of Affinity Designer on PC and Ipad.

More than a year ago I discovered VectorStyler and it is now
my main vector graphics program. Because of its features
and i am still impressed.

But more important the developer is very open for new ideas
and how to make the Software better. Its sometimes already
in the next build.

 

[Ash]

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback. Spiral tool is now available in the 2.3 beta if you want to give it a go...

 

[FastVector]

Love the new spiral tool. It is now also available in the new update V2.3. Hopefully we will see the Blend tool released in V2.4.

[Markus van der Westhuizen]

Yay! I'm so happy the spiral tool finally made it to Affinity. And thank you for making it so much better than the Adobe Illustrator Spiral Tool. I'm in love!

A few more options for gradients along paths would be amazing 🤩