Feature Request: Selection Groups (Persistent Selection Sets)

[ddavid]

It would be incredibly helpful to have a way to define selection groups similar to how it's done in software like Fusion 360. The idea is to allow users to create and name sets of selected objects, groups, or layers, independent of the existing layer/group hierarchy.

Affinity's current hierarchical grouping system is excellent for document organization, but it makes selecting objects especially those spread across different groups or layers cumbersome and repetitive. A selection group feature would let users save and quickly recall specific selections without having to manually re-select every time.

This could act as a secondary structure, orthogonal to the layer stack, purely for selection purposes. It wouldn’t interfere with visibility or nesting, it would simply streamline workflows that involve reusing complex selections across the document or artboards.

Edited May 3 by ddavid

[MikeTO]

Hi @ddavid and welcome to the forums. Although this feature doesn't exist in Affinity, Serif has stated that scripting is in development and this feature is something that would be possible to add via scripting, although you'd have to re-load the selection groups when you reopen the document because the group data would have to be stored in a custom field. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody develop scripts to do this once scripting is available.

[carl123]

1 hour ago, ddavid said:

The idea is to allow users to create and name sets of selected objects, groups, or layers

You can tag (multiple) objects, groups, Layers etc with a colour (via a right-click in the Layers panel)

You can then select all those layers by selecting one of them and doing a "Select Same Tag Color" via the same right-click menu

 

[Hangman]

2 hours ago, ddavid said:

The idea is to allow users to create and name sets of selected objects, groups, or layers

In the absence of scripts and to take 'Select Same' one stage further, you could use the States panel, where, on a basic level, you can again use Tag Colours, though that limits you to the eight tag colour options available and as such limits the number of groups you can define.

On a more advanced level, you can define object layers using regular expressions, which would provide an infinite number of options if working with hundreds or even thousands of objects you wish to define as part of different selection groups.

You can even use a combination of the two and very easily change which group an object belongs to by changing its tag colour or the regular expression defined by the object's layer name.

https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Panels/statesPanel.html&title=States panel

https://affinity.help/designer2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/ObjectControl/layerStates.html&title=Layer states

[ddavid]

Thanks for everyone's response. Colour tags and regex seems like viable alternatives. Scripting in the future sounds great too! Cheers.

UPDATE: Wow, layer states seem very powerful!

Edited May 4 by ddavid