Rearrange Artboards [Feature Request]

[cje]

I'm normally using multiple Artboards when designing brand identities. Each Artboard for each part of the identity.

Sometimes, at a later stage, brand identities are expanded. In those cases Artboard 10 would sometimes fit best as Artboard 2.

Moving and reorganise the Artboards can be done by moving one by one, but it takes time. It would have been much better to be able to reorganised the Artboards by just changing the numbers for Affinity to rearrange them automatically. 

As far as I understand it's not possible; then this is a feature request.
Otherwise I would be happy to learn a way.

[loukash]

Since you can name artboards however you like, how would you want to arrange them then?
Alphabetically?
And then? From top to bottom? From left to right? 

Questions, questions, questions…  

Artboards are not pages but freely editable vector objects. Currently there is no mechanism in Affinity to arrange objects on canvas by object name.

But artboards can be arranged on canvas using the Alignment panel on the toolbar or using the menu commands. So you can rearange them roughly by name first and take care of the details later by using those commands.

[cje]

12 hours ago, loukash said:

Since you can name artboards however you like, how would you want to arrange them then?
Alphabetically?
And then? From top to bottom? From left to right? 

I understand your point, but it should be no problem adding an "order number" to each artboard.
Top to bottom, left to right; I guess you have come a long way if you just sort them. Anyway, vertical/horisontal sorting could be added as an option. Even grid sorting (for example: max 4 artboards wide before adding a new horizontal line of artboards)

 

[loukash]

That all aside, it's quite safe to assume that once the already announced scripting will be implemented, moving and arranging any canvas object via user defined automation will be possible. It won't be necessary to populate the already kilometers long application menus with even more commands, adding bloat to the app UI.

In other words, I'd rather expect – and wish – scripting to be implemented first. 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, cje said:

I understand your point, but it should be no problem adding an "order number" to each artboard.
Top to bottom, left to right; I guess you have come a long way if you just sort them. Anyway, vertical/horisontal sorting could be added as an option. Even grid sorting (for example: max 4 artboards wide before adding a new horizontal line of artboards)

 

There is another complication, though. For some purposes (specifically printing or exporting to PDF) the order and layout on the workspace is not relevant. What is relevant for those functions is the order in the layer stack, on the Layers panel. The lowest Artboard in the stack will be page 1, the next one up will be page 2, etc.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

For some purposes (specifically printing or exporting to PDF) the order and layout on the workspace is not relevant. What is relevant for those functions is the order in the layer stack, on the Layers panel. The lowest Artboard in the stack will be page 1, the next one up will be page 2, etc.

Good point. And this is apparently by design, so that the X,Y position on canvas can be laid out freely without affecting the "page" sequence.