Should I Avoid Complex Nesting of Artboards and Layers?

[wesleyb]

I have large complex documents, where:

• several layers may have several artboards;
• several artboards may contain several layers;
• layers may be nested in layers (multiple levels of nesting);
• sometimes artboards within a larger artboard (just one level of nesting).

This seems to be freely permitted by the software, but after recently discovering two bugs (AF-5990, AF-5990 follow-up), I worry I may be using the software in an unintended manner.

Does my usage suggest I am badly organizing content in my documents? Am I setting myself up for trouble?

P.S. I remember when symbols were new — nesting them caused bugs — but layers and artboards are not new.

[walt.farrell]

As a user and former developer of other complex software, I would say you're probably using it in ways that are not as well-tested, and with your complexity are probably more prone to encounter edge-cases that are not well-implemented. Or, with respect to your posting about AF-5990, will get into areas that are not intended, especially with Linked/Embedded file.

Probably using one kind of top-level object (Layer, or Artboard) would be better, and not trying to nest multiple containers of different types within each other as you're doing.

 

[Pšenda]

... use Groups rather than Layers and other Artboards to group objects/layers and organize them.

[wesleyb]

Thank you, both. Okay, I'm ready to change my ways.

But how should I organize Artboards¹… use Groups? I would not use layers, cuz AF-5990 follow-up prevents me from using design as linked document with layers I can toggle.

I would organize Artboards, cuz Layers panel is short and objects are many.

 

[wesleyb]

Example Use Case

A. File: designs for playing cards e.g. —

• Number cards (2 – 10)
• Face cards (Jacks, Queens, Kings)
• Unique cards (Aces, Jokers)
• Back of card

— and three variations of all those —

• "Large" (life-size)
• "Medium" (reduced detail)
• "Small" (miniature representation)

B. File: instructions that illustrate how to use the cards.

• Embeds first file to render specific card via artboard.
• Optionally toggles different layers of card (to highlight a specific aspect e.g. suit, number, face).
• Use different variations e.g. "Large" for clarity and accuracy, "Small" for emphasis on basic elements (and to be economic with space).

Hierarchy (Based on Axioms¹)

• ___ ("Large")
  • Artboards (one per card)
    • Layers (highlight different elements)
      • Layers
      • Groups
    • Groups
      • Layers
      • Groups
• ___ ("Medium")
  • Artboards (one per card)
    • …
• ___ ("Small")
  • Artboards (one per card)
    • …

For ___, I have used Layers, but I must re-evaluate hierarchy. 

¹ Axioms

1. "layers should ideally be all inside an artboard layer"
   — MEB's response to "Artboards and Layers"
2. "use Groups […] to group objects/layers and organize them"
   — Pšenda's comment
3. "using one kind of top-level object (Layer, or Artboard) would be better"
   — walt.farrell's comment
4. use Artboards for variations of a design
   — Artboards and How to use them BETTER in Affinity Designer

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, wesleyb said:

"layers should ideally be all inside an artboard layer"
— MEB's response to "Artboards and Layers"

I doubt this is the only recommendable use of object layers versus artboards. MEB is right regarding an Affinity factory default ("by design") with activated "Edit All Layers" option in the Layers panel:

On 1/12/2018 at 10:52 AM, MEB said:

So when you create or move an object over an artboard, it's layer is automatically created or moved to inside that artboard layer. This is by design.

But if you deselect the option "Edit All Layers" you can work well with artboards inside a parent artboard + layers above & outside the child artboards. It was discussed occasionally and requested in particular by users who need to split a large format for export in smaller areas without the need (workaround) of slice creation but simply by using the standard "Export" main menu entry and feature to export "Whole document" = All Artboards. – For instance…

Compare the layout + exported /attached results in the post below + the various examples in the post after that by @loukash:

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, wesleyb said:

Artboards (one per card)

Are the cards the same size? If so, have you considered using a specific Grid with space?

https://affinityspotlight.com/article/designing-a-travel-icon-set-with-isabel-sousa/

[wesleyb]

I won't use layers outside or as siblings of Artboards for now, because the bugs it caused (and how Artboard and Layers behave "by design") suggest I am "swimming upstream".

@Pšenda, yes, yes. All cards are same size. I arrange Artboards in grid layout. I had three grid layouts (Large, Medium, Small), but I can overlap them all on one layout, and toggle visibility using Layer Queries/States.

Ah, so nested Artboard can be used comfortably (i.e. no spontaneously moving content), and custom Artboard shapes offer negative space. (Also, nested artboards do not cause a linked-doc-layer-toggle bug.) Thanks, @thomaso.

I will test:

• Artboard ("Face Cards")
  • Group ("Large")
    • Artboard ("King (Large)")
      • Layer
      • Layer
      • …
    • …
  • …
• Artboard ("Number Cards")
  • Group ("Large")
    • Artboard ("10 (Large)")
      • …
    • …
  • …
• …

I must update a lot, but I think this will let me avoid AF-5990 follow-up bug.

P.S. Note to self: Next, consider removing Groups in favor of all Layers in a card Artboard having Large/Medium/Small versions, so you have 1/3 as many artboards.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, wesleyb said:

Artboard ("Face Cards")
Artboard ("Number Cards")

Does this level have to be Artboards? What are the advantages of this over a standard Group?

My previous tip on using grids and groups instead of individual Artboards was aimed at replacing them - what advantage do Artboards for individual cards have for you if they have the same dimensions? Do they have different/specific grids? Do they make exporting easier? (This can be circumvented by creating slices in the Export persona).

[Iltirtar]

On 3/11/2025 at 4:26 AM, wesleyb said:

Example Use Case

Although your approach may make sense logically, I don't think it does in practical terms. I think Artboards are not to be used in the way you intend. If you need to nest an Artboard, use a rectangle instead —or a group, or a layer, depending on how you want it to behave.

Also, I don't think Affinity Designer has been thought and optimized to work with too much complexity within a single document. My experience with this software is that working with so many artboards and nesting stuff too deep will soon be a nightmare —the layer tree view is very basic and doesn't even have a search function, labeling layers is very basic (just colors), and so on...

A note on symbols: this feature was added at some point (I think it was present already in version 1), but was never properly developed any further. If you plan to have more than a few, simple symbols, I'd say you would do best to stay away from them altogether, especially if you have a complex document structure.

 

On 3/11/2025 at 9:49 AM, Pšenda said:

have you considered using a specific Grid with space?

This is indeed a good aproach. Having different elements in the same Artboard is a clearer way to work with Affinity. It is better in terms of workflow, and suits better the way the UI is designed.

Also, if the project is very complex, I would seriously consider splitting it into multiple files, if possible.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Iltirtar said:

A note on symbols: this feature was added at some point (I think it was present already in version 1), but was never properly developed any further. If you plan to have more than a few, simple symbols, I'd say you would do best to stay away from them altogether, especially if you have a complex document structure.

Could you explain more about why you suggest staying away from Symbols? They seem very useful if/when the same element(s) appear in multiple places in a document. They also reduce file sizes.

[Iltirtar]

42 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Could you explain more about why you suggest staying away from Symbols?

Yes. You can use them if they are few and simple, but as soon you have more than a dozen, the thing becomes a mess very easily. There is not even the possibility to sort them or categorizing them in any way. They just stay sorted by creation order in the symbols panel. This would have been acceptable in 1990, maybe, but surely not in 2025.

Also, the way symbols work is basically cumbersome by design, as it introduces unnecessary complexity in the layer tree: making a symbol creates a group that contains the actual object you want to be a symbol... Not good. Other software implements this better.

I might add that, if symbols are complex in structure or used in relatively large quantities, Designer may become kind of unresponsive.

Edit: And just came to my mind, the fact that once a property is unlinked cannot be linked again, is a big minus, although probably less relevant in the context of the topic.

[wesleyb]

I don't anticipate how exactly I will now organize my file, but I know it will be easier and simpler now. Thanks, y'all.

—

@Pšenda, My answers¹ to your questions, led my investigation of AD Export persona. I see Export persona has "Layers" panel which has [Create Slice] button! 😲 I do not need Artboards to easily prepare for export. Thank you for probing.

@Iltirtar, correct. I used too many Artboards, and used them not as they were intended. Nesting is how I can suffer the otherwise limited Layers panel, but Queries/States should reduce my reliance on Layers panel. I had overused symbols; I now use them within reason, and am considering replacing some with linked documents. My project is complex; I've just begun using linked documents, which is arguably superior to symbols.

@R C-R, mastering the quirks of symbols was a challenge for me. Symbols might be the cause of my unmentioned performance issue.³

—

¹ Artboards had made exporting easier, because tool to create Slices does not snap (except to Artboards). The Artboards all have the same grid. Yes, export was easier, until I just learned to use "Layers" panel in Export persona.

² I treated them as a third organization option (compared to Group and Layer) — an option had the "feature" of always being visible in the design (unlike Group and Layer).

³ Given I have two documents open, when I update document A (which has many symbols), and I move mouse to open file names tab, then AD begins to auto-update document B (which has many instances of document A), and which makes AD unresponsive. I can not blame symbols certainly for performance, but I hope to test using linked documents instead, and evaluate whether performance (and user experience) improves.

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, Iltirtar said:

Also, the way symbols work is basically cumbersome by design, as it introduces unnecessary complexity in the layer tree: making a symbol creates a group that contains the actual object you want to be a symbol... Not good. Other software implements this better.

Personally, I disagree with the recommendation to "avoid" Symbols. I use dozens of them in hundreds of instances without any problems. If the only replacement for a Symbol is a direct (but unlinked and therefore jointly uneditable) copy of objects, then the argument for overloading the Layer stack is completely irrelevant, because the copy will load it in exactly the same way, but with all the disadvantages compared to a Symbol - changes to one instance will not be applied to all the others. On the contrary, in the case of repeated use of the same elements, I strongly recommend them, even though their management is completely inadequate to their importance and benefit. Hopefully Serif will improve this over time.

[Iltirtar]

39 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Personally, I disagree with the recommendation to "avoid" Symbols.

Well, I guess it depends on how you work. To me, the fact that the implementation of the symbol panel is so primitive is a deal breaker. But maybe if you don't rely so much on the panel, this is not a problem. My recommendation to avoid heavy use of symbols is more related to very complex documents or very complex symbols, though, since I have had both workflow and performance issues with that. My experience is that life gets easier with Affinity if you break down projects into smaller documents, whenever possible, and avoid heavy use of symbols. But that's just my experience, related to the kind of work I do and my workflow preferences. Maybe there are some cases where avoiding symbols is worse than having them.

39 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Hopefully Serif will improve this over time.

When Serif has not improved the thing since version 1 of Designer (this is more than five years ago), I'd say hope is not very well founded. Even less, considering that we are not talking rocket science here: drag-and-drop to sort items in a panel, item groups/folders, an option to «sort alphabetically»... These are all things that a professional software developer codes in a single afternoon. If they have not done it already, it is because they don't care at all. So let's hope we are still alive when they start caring.

[LionelD]

This feedback is based on AD2.5.6 on M3 MBP running Sequoia 15.3.2.

I use Symbols a lot.  I have a set of documents that are very similar, and some of them have thousands of instances of Symbols from a menagerie of around 30 different Symbol definitions.  A Query in States Panel reports nearly 3,000 instances of Symbols on the most intense Artboard in one document; exports using Export Persona take a few seconds, nothing to complain about.  These are 16-Bit ProPhoto documents have a standard layout with 5 Artboards (large Artboards, but that does not seem to matter).

I do find that managing Symbols does become a problem for me because there’s no way to organize them.  I did try using Assets to manage them, but gave that up because of the associated behavioural quirks.  The most effective approach I’ve found is grouping related Symbols in a document of their own, and copy-paste what I need.

I do try to avoid nesting Symbols too deeply because I’m concerned about how that could affect performance, but I don’t have any metrics to back that up.

One thing I have definitely noticed is that using adjustments inside a Symbol can eat up your processor (in my case it was the HSL adjustment that caused severe performance degradation - export took about 15 minutes on my previous 2014 MBP - but no problem with my current M3 MBP).  I did report that, but I’ve no feedback on any remedial action Affinity was able to take.

Regards

Lionel