Navigating layers!…

[sansnom]

Hi, in Affinity Designer, and with a dense illustration in paths, with many group and subgroup items, I have to constantly scroll in the layers palette in order to point to a particular object or insert an object at a specific level.
You can obviously select an object on the canvas so that the focus is automatically in the layers palette, but this still lacks flexibility and precision.

In Affinity Publisher, the notion of pages allows you to navigate in the (depth) of a composition, the pages being then similar to “layers”, but this notion is absent in AD.

I may have found a solution. By inserting pointers into the illustration (here for the example there are two, TOP and DOWN) at two specific locations at the top and bottom of the stack, you just have to click on them so that the focus is updated in the layers palette, thus avoiding scrolling with the mouse in the palette. Once the illustration is finished, you just have to hide these markers.

The interest is to be able to place these temporary markers at different levels depending on the complexity and the requirement of the construction of the illustration.🙃 

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, sansnom said:

with many group and subgroup items

I think that in your case it would be appropriate to use Symbols, because groups of knobs have an identical appearance. For these situations I use a specific Artboard, where I have the definition of all individual Symbols "sideways", so that it improves the clarity of the layer stack. At the same time, it makes it easier to edit the symbol/group, because the change is made only once in one place.