Suggestion: Retain Layer Panel selection between sessions

[Laura Ess]

Couldn't find this suggestion on a search, so here's my suggestion.

Anyway the minor annoyance I have is this. I work on different projects in Designer, and often need to break that and go do other things. So what happens is I save the document I'm working on before closing the app, but not close the document. That way when I come back and open Designer the document opens with it.  Now when I close the app the selection in the layer panel is usually on the last object I was working on (Design 01), but when I open Design again, all layers are collapsed and the selection is on the Artboard (Design 02). If I expand the Artboard Designer will have selected the upper group where the last focus was, but not the last object I had selected (Design 03).

Now I have a lot of groups and subgroups because I find it easy to show/hide various parts of the document (I have about 36 figures and items in the example below). It would be really helpful when the document was reloaded that the same object was selected and the groups/layers/objects expanded to show that. I'm not sure if Photo and Publisher do this as well, but I would think that the ability have this as well might be helpful.

[NotMyFault]

+1

as a workaround you may use color tags for layers.

before quitting, assign a specific color for the current layer. Then you can search for that color tag and select it.

[carl123]

6 hours ago, Laura Ess said:

but when I open Design again, all layers are collapsed and the selection is on the Artboard (Design 02). If I expand the Artboard Designer will have selected the upper group where the last focus was, but not the last object I had selected (Design 03).

Layer > Find in Layers Panel (CTRL+K)

After opening the document, should expand the layer structure with the last object selected still selected

Not sure why you only get the Group selected. I can't reproduce that but it may be due to my simplified document to test this. If no one else can reproduce it we may need a cut-down version of your document (that still shows the issue) to see what could be causing it

 

[Frozen Death Knight]

I also reported this. It's a Windows only bug that doesn't happen on Mac. Carl123's suggestion of using Find in the Layers Panel (I've set it to ctrl+F because other softwares I use have that keybind) is a solid workaround. It at least makes this issue bearable, but it really needs to get a priority fix. Complex layer management is crucial.

[Laura Ess]

On 10/27/2023 at 3:49 PM, NotMyFault said:

+1

as a workaround you may use color tags for layers.

before quitting, assign a specific color for the current layer. Then you can search for that color tag and select it.

Actually, you can't search for just one colour! I knew you could add colour tags to a layer but didn't know that you could search for one, and it seems you can't.  After some hunting I found that you can SELECT and UNSELECT like coloured layers, which means that you need at least two of them! If you only have one layer of a colour, you can't select it from another layer! Than means I'd have to find the coloured layer manually anyway. 

A good idea, and even if it doesn't work, I've learned something I didn't know before!

[GarryP]

This could be pushing the boundaries of how far you would go to get what you want but you could:

• Create a group, which is hidden and locked, at the bottom of the Layers stack;
• Create a layer for each Tag Colour you want to keep track of and put it in the group;
• When you want to find something, right-click on the wanted colour-tag layer and choose “Select Same Tab Colour”.

See attached video for a short demo.

Like I said, it might be stretching common sense to breaking point, but it might be useful to someone.