Hit a wrong key and everything disappears

[Tokamak]

Using Affinity Designer 2 on windows 11.

I use the keyboard heavily, and occasionally I will fat finger something and hit the wrong key, making everything in my document go white. All of my layers are there, they have 100% opacity, they are enabled...but the document is just blank whiteness. Undo does nothing. I have to reload the file from my last save. I have no idea what key combo I am accidentally hitting, because it always happens when I'm moving fast, and I can never replicate it by trying key combos near to what I was trying to hit.

I can't find anything out of the ordinary (as far as I can tell) in the view menu.

Obviously it's my dumb self doing this, but it's a pain and I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am causing to happen.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be going on?

[mpowell]

There's a major bug. But I usually use Inkscape instead. It has all the functions that Affinity has.

[prophet]

Do you have History enabled? You might be able to step back through to see what happened.

[Tokamak]

50 minutes ago, prophet said:

Do you have History enabled? You might be able to step back through to see what happened.

Undo didn't undo it, so I assumed it wasn't an action that would show up there, but I didn't actually look at the history. I'll at least check that next time.

[thomaso]

Can you upload a screenshot of

• the entire screen
• including the Layers panel
• with one object selected with the Move Tool
• and zoomed out to show all artboard(s)?

And, do you remember if it happens when a certain tool is selected?

[Tokamak]

5 hours ago, thomaso said:

Can you upload a screenshot of

• the entire screen
• including the Layers panel
• with one object selected with the Move Tool
• and zoomed out to show all artboard(s)?

And, do you remember if it happens when a certain tool is selected?

I will take note of those things and upload a screenshot the next time it happens.

 

I'm frankly not really clear on what artboards even are. I started using photoshop (to do layout of comics...yes, I know it's the wrong tool), then switched to Designer, and I don't really know much about the designer specific features.

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

I'm frankly not really clear on what artboards even are.

Then maybe start by reading https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Artboards/artboards_about.html

[NotMyFault]

in such situations, don’t panic.

• First, save your document (as a new document) with history enabled. No matter what you did, you then have a recovery point, both for continuing editing, and analysis what might caused that issue (e.g. by uploading it to the forum publicly or to a private Dropbox link, on request available from Affinity staff)
• Then, before closing or saving over the current file: make a copy of the current file, to have a second (older) recovery file.
• Activate the navigator panel, and enlarge it, either by increasing the size of the panel column, or removing it from panel to floating, where you can make it as big as your display. Does the document rendering look ok in Navigator panel?
• next, we need to find out if you actually edited the file, or changed some app settings unrelated to the data in the document, but impacting how it is rendered.
• if you have a parallel installation of Affinity on another PC or iPad, transfer the saved file and open it there. Looking ok there? Then quit Designer on the PC having issue, restart the PC, and try again. Issue solved?
• If Issue is in the document: upload file here for analysis.
• If issue is how the canvas is rendered: check which view mode is active (pixel / vector /. -ray etc) and switch back to vector.
• To repair a potentially damaged file: open a new one of same size (in Publisher if possible), and import pages form the old file.

Again, if something goes crazy the first rule is to stay cool, save the file with history, take a breath, and then use all resources like other PCs and the forum.

This forum and all the great members, and Affinity staff of course, is the biggest advantage of using Affinity apps vs. Photoshop. You will get very fast and qualified support, including moral support. 

[Tokamak]

Thanks! I shall follow all of this advice if/when it happens again, and post here, even if I resolve it myself, so someone who has the same issue can find it.

[Ash Eldritch]

Just a thought, you're not pressing the equivalent of "alt" (Start? shows up as the windows key on my multi keyboard) on Mac and the curve/object within the layers panel as that'll hide everything else.

[Tokamak]

It happened again, and by carefully going through what you said, I figured it out. I was apparently going into "wireframe->outline" mode, which I didn't know was a thing. Apparently ctrl+Y must have been what I hit.

Thank you for the help and moral support. I'll leave this here so that someone else having the same problem might find it.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Tokamak said:

I was apparently going into "wireframe->outline" mode, which I didn't know was a thing. Apparently ctrl+Y must have been what I hit.

FWIW, if you want in AD V2 you can customize the Toolbar to show the "Advanced View Mode" button group, one of which is for Wireframe View Mode.

[carl123]

In 2.1 CTRL+Y used to be mapped to the Redo command which a lot of people will have ingrained in their memory. (It changed in 2.2)

You can always unmap (or change) that shortcut in your keyboard shortcut settings to prevent it accidentally happening again

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, Tokamak said:

It happened again, and by carefully going through what you said, I figured it out. I was apparently going into "wireframe->outline" mode, which I didn't know was a thing.

Good to hear you found the culprit + the solution. Now your topic title and the initial post appear not to match with the event / the screenshot:

On 9/26/2023 at 10:09 PM, Tokamak said:

(…) everything disappears

(…) everything in my document go white. (…) the document is just blank whiteness.

From that perspective you also could say "everything goes black" 😉

[Tokamak]

On 10/17/2023 at 8:57 PM, carl123 said:

In 2.1 CTRL+Y used to be mapped to the Redo command which a lot of people will have ingrained in their memory. (It changed in 2.2)

You can always unmap (or change) that shortcut in your keyboard shortcut settings to prevent it accidentally happening again

That explains why I kept hitting that from muscle memory.