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Arrow heads for line ends


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pjmnikon,

 

Hello and welcome to the forums. Arrowheads is currently on the Roadmap and will be added later ( now if you already own Affinity Designer you can use the beta which has arrow shapes, not quite the same as you are looking for but it might make due in certain situations until arrowheads are added to lines. I hope that helps.

 

Hokusai

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  • 3 weeks later...

I own and download every version of Affinity Designer hoping that arrowheads will have been added. The low priority given to this feature request -- and the fact that arrow shapes are thought to be a suitable workaround in "certain situations" demonstrates just how low a priority technical illustration is for AD.

 

The fact is, AD is essentially useless for technical illustration without arrowheads. A shame, really... With arrowheads and more robust scaling/dimensioning options could be such a marvelous program and nearly complete replacement for Illustrator.

 

We're not asking for Autocad here, folks. Cheap vector graphics programs 1/10th as capable and a fraction of the size of AD have arrowheads! Just give us the ability to place arrows on the ends of lines and curves, please. Seriously, how hard can this be?

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  • 3 weeks later...

My firm does lots of maps, urban design diagrams, and landscape design plans.  We rely on arrowheads extensively to indicate movement and direction.  The lack of arrowhead is the only thing that is keeping us from switching to Affinity Designer.  The rest of the program is wonderful, but arrows are a must.  Hopefully, some day Affinity can match or surpass what Illustrator already does in this regard.  Cheers!

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...

Yep, likewise. I was surprised/disappointed to find this lacking in Designer when I first bought it. When every application of this type – from the most expensive commercial package to the lowest 'hobbiest' offering – has arrowheads, I simply assumed it was there. But I was encouraged to see it on the Roadmap from as far back as 2014 and assurances that this was definitely coming. This isn't a complex feature to add – why the huge delay? I feel really embarrassed about promoting Designer when something so basic is missing.

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  • Staff

Hi rwessel,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

This is coming in a future version but there's no eta for it, sorry. The roadmap covers the whole 1.x cycle of the app so things that are still listed there will be implemented in future versions until v2.0 (the ones already implemented were deleted from the list). Although a few features may look simple to implement from an user point of view they might present a few challenges/issues when translated to code.

Bear with us while we work on this.

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On 13/03/2018 at 11:52 AM, MEB said:

Hi rwessel,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

This is coming in a future version but there's no eta for it, sorry. The roadmap covers the whole 1.x cycle of the app so things that are still listed there will be implemented in future versions until v2.0 (the ones already implemented were deleted from the list). Although a few features may look simple to implement from an user point of view they might present a few challenges/issues when translated to code.

Bear with us while we work on this.

 

I joined the forum back in 2014 when I first purchased Affinity Designer. I posted about the lack of arrowheads back then. The universal response was, "they're on the roadmap - coming soon". I've been eagerly jumping onto every release for the following 4 years searching for arrowheads…

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Hi rwessel,

They are still on the roadmap but weren't implemented yet. We never give etas for specific features - they are implemented as soon as they are finished. We are still committed to implement what's planned since then and i understand your frustration but we are moving through them as fast as we can.

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  • 2 weeks later...

No arrowheads? What? You cannot be serious. I've just paid out on Affinity Designer because I thought it was time to "upgrade" from DrawPlus. After installing AD it took me 10 minutes to discover that there were no arrowheads, come to this forum and... well, be gobsmacked. They are vital to my primary use of DrawPlus. Without them Affinity Designer is a waste of money for me. I'm off now to cancel my order and ask for a refund. Arrowheads really are that important. And judging from the string of comments above I'm not alone.

 

Let me know when they finally get added and maybe I'll come back and buy it again.

 

Really, really disappointed.

 

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Hi andykey,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Designer is not an "upgrade" or replacement for DrawPlus. It's a new software that's being built from scratch to take advantage of the latest technologies/API's offered by modern OS's/hardware.

As you discovered not all features were implemented yet and eventually not all will will have a direct equivalent in Designer but arrowheads are on the roadmap and will be added at some point.This is one of the most requested features however there's still a few issues that must be solved and that's why they are taking some time. If you take a look around there's some workarounds suggested in the forum that may or may not work for you, depending on what you are working on. In any case thank you for trying Designer and for your feedback. Hopefully these will come sooner rather than later.

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On 30/03/2018 at 9:54 AM, MEB said:

Affinity Designer is not an "upgrade" or replacement for DrawPlus. It's a new software that's being built from scratch to take advantage of the latest technologies/API's offered by modern OS's/hardware.

As you discovered not all features were implemented yet and eventually not all will will have a direct equivalent in Designer but arrowheads are on the roadmap and will be added at some point.This is one of the most requested features however there's still a few issues that must be solved and that's why they are taking some time. If you take a look around there's some workarounds suggested in the forum that may or may not work for you, depending on what you are working on. In any case thank you for trying Designer and for your feedback. Hopefully these will come sooner rather than later.

 

Hi, MEB. Thanks for the reply. Having tried AD I have to say it looked an awful lot like a replacement for DrawPlus. Most of it I recognised instantly, which is not a bad thing, but highlights the fact that what's important to us users is not how clever the technological tricks are behind the scenes, but what it's like for us to use. As others have already remarked, arrowheads are basic drawing-software-101 stuff from a user's point of view.

 

There's not much wrong with DrawPlus (well, apart from its tendency to crash now and again and its limited support for some filetypes) but I'm conscious that it's no longer supported. As a long-time Serif customer I'm happy to hand over some more money for new software occasionally if I think that the products I'm getting are moving forward, not backward. Same goes for PagePlus which I also use heavily: I was eagerly awaiting a chance to buy the Affinity "equivalent" (can I use that word?) but now I'm not so sure.

 

I haven't seen any workarounds that let me do bendy arrows easily and quickly, dozens of times, over and over again (see attached snapshot) but I welcome correction. (Before you say it: no, straight arrow shapes aren't good enough.)

 

 

 

map.png.07e593bd6efbca8836b38268346a2bc7.png

 

 

map2.png

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37 minutes ago, AndyK said:

Same goes for PagePlus which I also use heavily: I was eagerly awaiting a chance to buy the Affinity "equivalent" (can I use that word?) but now I'm not so sure.

 

Affinity Publisher is due to be released to public beta in the next few months (teaser below) but apart from the good OpenType support that the other Affinity apps already have it’s likely to take years to catch up with PagePlus. It will only be able to open PDFs of PagePlus files, not the native *.ppp files themselves, and at this stage it doesn’t even look as though we’ll be able to import WritePlus *.stt files (which would be a big help for anyone migrating long and complex documents).

 

 

37 minutes ago, AndyK said:

I haven't seen any workarounds that let me do bendy arrows easily and quickly, dozens of times, over and over again (see attached snapshot) but I welcome correction.

 

If you use the same bendy arrows over and over again (e.g. left dogleg here, right sixty-degree bend there) you can construct them once and store them in the Assets panel, but perhaps you’re looking for more flexibility than that.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

If you use the same bendy arrows over and over again (e.g. left dogleg here, right sixty-degree bend there) you can construct them once and store them in the Assets panel, but perhaps you’re looking for more flexibility than that.

Thanks for the idea but no, they're nearly all subtly different. I find it helps people use the maps successfully* if each arrow gives a clear idea of the shape and angle of the turn they have to make; also the arrows often have to be adjusted to avoid covering over important information on the map.

 

* where "successfully" is defined as "not getting lost" :)

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5 minutes ago, AndyK said:

Thanks for the idea but no, they're nearly all subtly different.

 

That’s too bad, although I suspected as much!

 

5 minutes ago, AndyK said:

* where "successfully" is defined as "not getting lost" :)

 

LOL. :D

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I have a very strong prediction they are making a pure vector brush engine rather than just an arrowhead. It's more beneficial in the long run and they take a very long time to implement it.  They decide to build apartment instead of just a single house. 

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On 31/03/2018 at 0:56 PM, Fatih19 said:

I have a very strong prediction they are making a pure vector brush engine rather than just an arrowhead. It's more beneficial in the long run and they take a very long time to implement it.  They decide to build apartment instead of just a single house. 

Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by "vector brush", I don't think that would help at all. What we're talking about here is a nice simple curved line with an arrowhead (or other terminating shape) at one or both ends of it, not (say) repeating arrowheads along the length of a line. What we have at the moment is a house with a small but important part of the foundations missing.

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37 minutes ago, AndyK said:

Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by "vector brush", I don't think that would help at all. What we're talking about here is a nice simple curved line with an arrowhead (or other terminating shape) at one or both ends of it, not (say) repeating arrowheads along the length of a line. What we have at the moment is a house with a small but important part of the foundations missing.

Vector brush here is what you will find in Adobe Illustrator for example. Where you make a vector shape and then it will be stretched to follow a path. Pretty much like the current intensity brush but instead of png image, we use vector shape. So, you just make an arrow shape, exclude the triangle, pointy part from the stretched part. And just make a path. 

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14 hours ago, Oval said:

One of the best workarounds in AD is “Text on a path” together with your own arrow font.

 

@Oval,

 

now that makes me curious :) 

How do you make an own arrow font? And how do you place an 'arrowhead shaped letter' (or a glyph) at the end of a path?

 

Many thanks!

d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
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2 hours ago, dominik said:

How do you make an own arrow font?

And how do you place an 'arrowhead shaped letter' (or a glyph) at the end of a path?

 

Moin, Moin, dominik. Kommt auf den Fonteditor an. Am einfachsten ist es, anfangs beispielsweise eine Dingbats-Schrift als Grundlage zu nutzen. Wer diese Arbeit scheut, nutzt keinen Fonteditor, aber die vorhandenen simplen Dreiecke in verschiedenen Schriften.

Exakt mit Tabulator oder indem man die Endpunkte des Pfades verschiebt oder den Pfad kürzt oder …

Dann noch die Grundlinie anpassen oder man ist ganz faul und nutzt eine Durchstreichung.

Durch Kursivierung kann man übrigens die Enden auch verzerren und dadurch etwas »in die Kurve legen«.

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7 hours ago, Oval said:

 

Moin, Moin, dominik. Kommt auf den Fonteditor an. Am einfachsten ist es, anfangs beispielsweise eine Dingbats-Schrift als Grundlage zu nutzen. Wer diese Arbeit scheut, nutzt keinen Fonteditor, aber die vorhandenen simplen Dreiecke in verschiedenen Schriften.

Exakt mit Tabulator oder indem man die Endpunkte des Pfades verschiebt oder den Pfad kürzt oder …

Dann noch die Grundlinie anpassen oder man ist ganz faul und nutzt eine Durchstreichung.

Durch Kursivierung kann man übrigens die Enden auch verzerren und dadurch etwas »in die Kurve legen«.

 

Moin @Oval :)

 

war ganz faul und habe es mit der Durchstreichung probiert. Gar nicht so schlecht für einen workaround.

 

Danke fürs Erklären!

 

For everyone else interested:

the most simple solution is to create a text line with a number of blanks that are set to strikethrough. Then add a triangle as the last glyph (e.g. one from Wingdings 3).

Then you create a path (no corners, though) and convert it to 'Text path'.

Finally you copy the text and paste it into the Text path.

The result is an arrow headed line that you can modify.

 

This is not a replacement to true lines with arrowheads but an interesting start for a workaround. Especially if you combine it with the Assets Panel.

 

d.

 

 

 

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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