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Posted

Hello,

I'm using Affinity Designer to draw a house plan that includes different layers of information. One layer has the room names, another one the furniture, another one the electric installation and another one some wiring layout for example. I'm regularly updating parts of that plan and need to provide it to different people to work with it, like the electrician, building company etc.

What I'm doing now is showing and hiding all appropriate layers or temporarily reduce their opacity and then create a PDF export under a different file name. But it's a tedious task and sometimes I forget to show the room names again in an export or some irrelevant layer is still visible.

So what I'm looking for is some presets for layer visibilities or properties like their opacity that I can save and apply quickly before doing an export. I'd create a preset that shows the electric installation (and has the furniture dimmed down), another one that doesn't have that but the plumbing instead, and maybe a few more.

Can I do that? If not, can it be added to the application?

I see there's export presets (in the form of file format settings, or the whole export persona), and other presets as well that I'm not using. But the layers are always a very manual thing to adjust. It would be great if combinations of settings could be saved there as well.

Posted (edited)

Theoretically, perfect. Thanks for the hint. It doesn't behave as described, though. While it applies all layer visibilities that I captured in the state, it doesn't update their opacities. All layers remain at their current opacity. It's totally ignored that some layers were dimmed in one of the snapshots. I haven't touched anything other than bringing the document in the desired state and then adding a snapshot. All snapshot options (visibilities, properties) are still enabled.

Also, the states panel is very primitive. I can't rename or reorder the entries in there. When creating multiple snapshots, they're in some arbitrary order and I cannot directly fix that. I could only iterate all states in the order I want them, create new states with new names, and finally delete the old states. (Untested)

Besides, the German translation is a bit odd. "State" is translated as "Status". But that would rather be "status" in English, and a better fitting UI text would be "Zustand" (pl. "Zustände"). It's a common translation mistake.

PS: Each saved snapshots says "20247 layers" below its name. I didn't know I have that many layers. Objects, maybe, but not layers.

Edited by ygoe
PS
Posted
1 minute ago, ygoe said:

It doesn't behave as described, though. While it applies all layer visibilities that I captured in the state, it doesn't update their opacities.

Have you seen some description which says that opacity is supposed to be included?

Posted
34 minutes ago, ygoe said:

Please explain what those layer properties are that should be considered. I haven't found any.

The Help says Visibility and Layer Effects (aka FX).

Posted

Okay, never used that. So I reverted the layer opacity to 100% and set the fill opacity in the layer effects to 50% instead for one snapshot and 100% for another. Still not working. The visual effect is the same so I could live with this alternative setting (even though it's less obvious) but the value is also not captured in the snapshot or applied from it.

If none of this is supposed to work in fact, I take back my "perfect" and my question to support this remains open.

Posted
15 hours ago, ygoe said:

If none of this is supposed to work in fact,

Opacity is neither "visibility" nor is it "Fx", so I would say it is not supposed to work and that States are not currently a solution for your need.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
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Posted

Is this opacity in the bottom right corner "Fx"? Because that also isn't regarded. It looks the same as layer opacity to me, it's less obvious though (it's hidden in that dialogue and not indicated elsewhere). So I could live with it if it were regarded.

image.png.36802bc2b1a71e885c8483cba1e6edf3.png

Posted
23 hours ago, ygoe said:

So what I'm looking for is some presets for layer visibilities or properties like their opacity that I can save and apply quickly before doing an export. I'd create a preset that shows the electric installation (and has the furniture dimmed down), another one that doesn't have that but the plumbing instead, and maybe a few more.

The file attached contains 3 (container) Layers, called...

PLUMBING
ELECTRICAL
FURNITURE

Each (container) Layer can turn its opacity down to 25% via the States Panel by using the two eye icons for each query

The opacity of each (container) Layer is controlled by showing or hiding a Curves layer that has its Alpha channel set to 25%

I don't know if this is what you want to do but it was interesting to test it.

 


 

states.afdesign

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Posted

I can't open that file as it was created with a version newer than what's currently available. Did you post this in the future? 😉

Posted

Anyway your approach sounds complicated to me. I guess I'd need a group of layers with each 2 layers to do this, one with the content and the other with the adjustment. (Maybe I'm imagining it wrong now, never done that.) Please remember that I also need to work with these layers so I need to find them and add objects to the correct layer. Having to go deeper in some hierarchy of layers doesn't make that easier. And occasionally I want to make individual adjustments to layer visibility or opacity to better visualise certain aspects of the plan. The saved snapshots should then bring me back to a defined named state.

I just tried something with a layer adjustment (or what that is) to bring the RGB alpha curve of a layer to max 0.5 instead of 1. Same visual effect again, and I can hide (i.e. disable) that adjustment in its context menu. (Again, no visual clue whether it's active or inactive until I open the context menu of the adjustment. And it's also not obvious that it limits opacity until I open its settings.) But the snapshot also ignores that. It's like it totally ignores everything but the bare visibility of a layer. I really can't see how it would do anything else of that what's described in the help document.

It's interesting to see at how many places I can set a layer's opacity level, both forward and backward (by dialing down an opacity-reducing effect). If you want to confuse future readers of that file, it's very easy. I prefer to stick with the plain opacity value that's shown right above the layers list. It's very clear and visible and easy to use. Can't that just be included in the state/snapshot? Shouldn't be all that complicated to implement that.

Posted
3 hours ago, ygoe said:

I can't open that file as it was created with a version newer than what's currently available. Did you post this in the future? 😉

Apparently @carl123 used the 2.6 Beta when creating that file.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.3, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

Posted
3 hours ago, ygoe said:

I can't open that file as it was created with a version newer than what's currently available. Did you post this in the future? 😉

Yes, Walt is right it was it was uploaded in the 2.6 beta version by mistake

3 hours ago, ygoe said:

Anyway your approach sounds complicated to me.

OK, so I won't redo it in 2.5 for you.

2.6 should be released soon so you can come back to this thread once it is and try it then 

PS It was simple not complicated

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Posted
On 1/24/2025 at 7:29 PM, ygoe said:

I didn't know I have that many layers. Objects, maybe, but not layers.

Due to the fact that all objects are displayed as one item/layer in the Layers panel, the universal designation "layers"(with a lowercase "l") is used.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.7.2948 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 24H2, Build 26100.2605.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 24H2, Build 26100.2605.
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Posted
On 1/25/2025 at 1:22 PM, walt.farrell said:

so I would say it is not supposed to work and that States are not currently a solution for your need.

The layer would have to be duplicated, set to a lower Opacity, and then either the original layer with the higher Opacity or the one with the lower Opacity could be selected using States. Symbols could be used to duplicate the contents of the layers.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.5.7.2948 (Retail)
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 24H2, Build 26100.2605.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 24H2, Build 26100.2605.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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