SVG's and Lightburn - Will this be fixed?

[Baron Laser]

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well. As a leather crafter, I recently switched to Affinity Designer2 in the hopes of moving away from Adobe Illustrator. I found it easier to create stitching holes and patterns in Affinity, especially compared to Illustrator. I even have a YouTube tutorial on this topic.

However, I hit a roadblock when working on a project for a client. They asked me to stretch one of my existing patterns and create new stitching holes. I exported an SVG file from Lightburn and opened it in Affinity Designer, only to encounter a messy and unusable workspace. Interestingly, the same SVG opened flawlessly in Inkscape and Illustrator.

I delved into both the Lightburn and Affinity forums and discovered what some call “workarounds” to make the SVG work in Affinity. But these aren’t true workarounds—they’re some what convoluted loops that disrupt my workflow. I have dead lines. What’s frustrating is that this issue has been around since 2021, so I see in the forum and hasn’t been addressed.

My question to the Affinity Designer team: Is there a plan to fix this SVG import issue? I was so close to ditching Adobe, and I’d love to fully embrace Affinity Designer if this hurdle can be overcome.

Thank you for your attention!

[Baron Laser]

I simple work around that works:

1. create (export) SVG in Lightburn.

2. Open the SVG in InkScape

3. Export SVG from InkScape as a PDF

4.Open PDF in Affinity Designer 2 and it seems to work fine. 

5. when you bring it back into Lightburn make sure to change the DPI to 96 from 72.

Hope this helps people that run into this problem with Affinity Designer 2.

[Lee D]

@Baron Laser Welcome to the forums.

We do have a report logged with our developers relating to SVG import in Designer from Lightburn. 

If you can provide one of your SVG files that doesn't import correctly, I can add this to the report and update it.

[Baron Laser]

Sure thing. Thank you.test.svg

[Lee D]

@Baron Laser Thank you for the file.

I've added it to the existing report with the developers and updated. However I can't provide a timeframe for it being resolved.

[Baron Laser]

Understood. Thank you for responding.

[Orillian]

Just checking in to say that I'm also experiencing bad behaviour when trying to import SVG's from Lightburn.

Usually all of the needed elements are there but split up across multiple locations in the space around the document sometimes at significant distances. I have to zoom way out and select everything then one by one bring them back to the document space.

I'll also see if I can provide an example file or two!

Workflow: We were trying to add elements to the SVG's saved in Lightburn that work explicitly with xTool XCS and replace existing Lightburn features but need to follow the same tool paths. Affinity allows us to edit those paths and create the changes we need, but trying to get the images into Affinity Designer in a non-broken way is killing me.

Edited November 3, 2024 by Orillian

[Baron Laser]

Hi Orillian,

Here is a work around that might be helpful to you if you are not aware of it already.

 

[MEB]

Hi @Orillian,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thank you for your feedback. This is a known issue that has already been logged with the development.
I've update/bumped the existing report.

[Orillian]

9 hours ago, Baron Laser said:

Hi Orillian,

Here is a work around that might be helpful to you if you are not aware of it already.

 

I had not seen that but I'll give it a try! Thanks for the heads up!