Question regarding Affinity Designer 1.10.6 vs AutoDesk Autocad

[BPinWV]

I have been a designer and used AutoDesk Autocad exclusively for many years.

I am fairly new to Affinity Designer, and am having trouble making the transition.  When I say fairly new, I might be exaggerating a bit, I have gone through a thorough online course and have practiced several YouTube tutorials.  And struggled with a few personal projects.  So I might be giving myself too much credit.

My biggest problem with Affinity Designer is the number of steps needed to accomplish something that Autodesk Acad does intuitively.  For example, with Acad there are Object Snaps such as  Quadrant, Perpendicular, Center, End Point, Mid Point, Tangent, Nearest, etc., these snaps assist in locating points to start a line or any number of other operations such as moving, copying, arraying, etc.  Another example is with ACAD there is a quick TRIM and EXTEND icon, which alloys for fast operations, versus in Affinity Designer one must open the Node Tool and then remember which combination of clicks and keystrokes necessary to alter the node or move an end point or break a line or other operations. 

Using Affinity Designer, one task that I would like to master is simply outlining simple photographs.  Say drawing a perimeter line around shapes such as a house or gift boxes.  In AutoCad this would be a simple and fast operation.  I am finding it so time consuming in Affinity Designer that I have come to the realization that I must be doing something wrong. 

I have attached a screen grab of a typical project, it has taken me over an hour to get where I stopped. I must be doing something wrong as it does not make sense such a project would take so long. 

Any words of advice or clarifying questions would be greatly appreciated. 

[NotMyFault]

Affinity Designer and AutoCAD are products for different makets / user groups.

As you described, Designer lacks many of the CAD functions available in AutoCAD. Designer targets the „creative“ Designer, not the Engineer or Architect. All vector objects are based on Bézier curves, giving only an approximation of the actual object (e.g. a circle from 4 nodes has 1/5000 error in radius depending on rotation angle). While this specific issue might be solvable, it is very unlikely that Designer will evolve into a CAD App with exact measurements, 2D or 3D shape builder etc.

So the bad news is there is no real solution. Either live with the limitations, or switch to an alternative app from the CAD domain.

[henryanthony]

@BPinWV I think it would be helpful if you explained what your desired end product is and why, if you can do certain things with ease in AutoCad, you want to use Affinity Designer to do the same thing. Affinity Designer is a complicated application with many tools that work contextually. It definitely takes some time to explore and understand the program before you become proficient.

I have been using Affinity Designer and Photo since December 2022. I have a background in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop but am still working to develop what I would call a professional level of skill with the Affinity products.

[BPinWV]

I appreciate these replies to my quandary.  I'm struggling being a novice at this sort of thing. These replies were clarifying and helpful.