Serif developers

[jackamus]

Are there any Serif developers who understands engineering drawing?

[Pšenda]

44 minutes ago, jackamus said:

Are there any Serif developers who understands engineering drawing?

Just out of interest - why should Serif developers understand engineering drawing, which is completely irrelevant knowledge given the focus of the company? I would expect a question of this type at a company that develops CAD products, not DTP.

[jackamus]

The reason I asked this question goes back to the day of DrawPlus. As I understand it AD was developed to replace DP. Ever since AD was published I have repeated asked why AD does not have all the same features as DP had? I understand that the build of AD was not just a case of doing a simple conversion from one platform to another and I accept that.

Since DP had a useful low-level engineering drawing feature, mainly the dimension tool, what kind of developer originally introduced it and why? Surely It must have been someone who had some knowledge of engineering drawing or architectural drawing. So why was this feature dropped? Coupled to that, is a very necessary feature of being able to move a guide to coincide with an object's handles or nodes but without the handles and nodes disappearing when you move the guide!

Also as a retired technical Illustrator, AD is pretty good for creating better looking technical illustrations than CAD software - trust me I know what I'm talking about because I have thoroughly researched it! Its the AD 'Pressure' feature where a stroke thickness can be changed along its length which makes all the difference. If you want I can send you a file of one of my illustrations which shows-off this feature at its best!

Going back to my complaint about guide lines and disappearing handles and nodes, this makes doing a technical illustration more difficult to position guides as major and minor axes or trying to align an object's node with another node or some other object's feature. Again I can provide a file that shows this problem.

To cut a long story short Serif may not realise that they could fill the middle ground between full on CAD and a basic engineering/archtectural drawing/technical illustration facility.

I'm happy to offer Serif any help or answer questions in order to bring in these useful feature into AD.

[Aammppaa]

There is without doubt a method to the way Serif have developed the Affinity apps.

None of us (bar Serif) know what that is, but I would imagine that they have analysed their userbase and assessed which features are most used, and then prioritised these.

However, there would have been substantial groundwork to do to enable the core engine to support the both the initial feature set and allow for future expansion in a way that doesn't cause bloat, incompatibility, fudges, etc. So some desirable tools would be pushed back until such time as the core supported the necessary features.

I would guess that a better dimensioning tool will arrive at some point. Publisher already has the ability to anchor one object to another, and Designer has Constraints, so some of the groundwork seem to have been laid.

Serif will no doubt implement this when they judge it is financially viable to do so... cost of implementation Vs predicted benefit of adding the feature. I really think it is as simple as that. And if the developers don't currently have the skills to add the tool (which seems unlikely to me) they will hire someone!

[Pšenda]

There are dozens of threads here on the forum dealing with the dimensioning tool.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dimensioning+Tool+site:https://forum.affinity.serif.com

Serif has commented many times on the gradual transfer of certain functions and features from old products. So I don't assume that he "dropped" the dimensioning tool, but only that he didn't implement it yet due to the low priority and the need to implement far more important things. I assume that the low priority of this function also stems from the focus of the products on DTP, not on CAD.

[Pšenda]

3 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

However, there would have been substantial groundwork to do to enable the core engine to support the both the initial feature set and allow for future expansion in a way that doesn't cause bloat, incompatibility, fudges, etc.

... and unlike legacy apps, they could run on three different platforms.

[jackamus]

All these responses are no more than I would expect from the years of trying to offer improvement suggestions. This is not a case of me not getting my own way but trying to understand why AD was a dumbed-down version of DP!

Not one of these suggestions have commented on WHY DP had these features and AD doesn't. I cannot understand how a drawing feature in the DP is not also desirable in AD! Either it was a policy change, developer change or too difficult to implement.

A decision must have been made not to to include them!

[thomaso]

16 minutes ago, jackamus said:

A decision must have been made not to to include them!

Not really. If AD was a new development (rather than continuing with DP code) it needs decisions about its implemented features – whereas decisions about all possible others are rather optional and certainly not mandatory.

Compare: If you do* something you do not necessarily need to consider what you do not want to do. Otherwise you might not even get able to start doing any thing because of the endless amount of options to do and consider …  * e.g. draw, create, cook, buy, say, think, …

[jackamus]

I disagree. I doubt that anyone makes a 'new' decision without some previous decisions being taken into account especially when it is in the same area or field. Compare: If you want to build a new kind of engine that uses only air as a fuel then all previous knowledge of other fuels and how they worked must play a part in the new decision. That's no different then I was saying. However if a philosopher wanted to create a new kind of bed mattress then I would agree that previous knowledge would not be very beneficial.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, jackamus said:

Not one of these suggestions have commented on WHY DP had these features and AD doesn't. I cannot understand how a drawing feature in the DP is not also desirable in AD!

This is not about if any particular feature (whether one that was in any of the Windows-only 'Plus' apps or any of the many other requested drawing-related features that Affinity lacks) is desirable or not. Obviously, some users would like to see one or more of them not just added to AD but also to AP & APub, including support across all three platforms Affinity supports.

What it is about is how many development resources & how much time each of these features will take to code, debug, & integrate into all the other existing & planned features in the Affinity suite.

Besides, simply because AD lacks some of the features of DP it is not in any meaningful sense just a "dumbed down" version of DP. It offers things DP is 'too dumb' to be able to do, like run on multiple platforms or use a single native file format for all the apps in the suite; so DP could justifiably be considered the dumbed down app.