Arrowheads please. . .

[A_B_C]

Let’s cry together … please, please, put it on the list …  -_-

[drJock]

Regretting my purchase of Affinity Designer, which I made back when arrowheads seemed to be just around the corner.

 

Now it somehow feels like everything I need to draw includes a bunch of pointers.  

 

Deeply disappointed.

[carlskii]

Any update on this functionality being added ? I'm running the trial for AD at the moment and this missing feature is big blocker for me as I do a lot of technical schematics. Also running the trial for Autodesk Graphic which does provide this. 

[bpedit]

Arrowheads have finally, ta-da!,  made it to the "feature roadmap".

 

Affinity Designer feature roadmap - Feature Requests - Affinity | Forum

[Mr. K]

That's 1-1/2 years ago!

[Alfred]

That's 1-1/2 years ago!

 

The 'feature roadmap' thread was created 1½ years ago, but it's constantly being updated.

 

 

Edited by Dave Harris, 01 March 2016 - 04:35 PM.

Updated after 1.4

[olibclarke]

Is there a timeline for this feature? Will it be in 1.5? I love Designer and use it all the time, but this is one of the major pain points remaining for me, as I use AD primarily for scientific illustration and schematics/diagrams, which involve a lot of arrows - creating and reorienting arrowheads one-by-one is a little painful.

 

Cheers,

Oliver.

[Mr. K]

The 'feature roadmap' thread was created 1½ years ago, but it's constantly being updated.

 

That's great, but I still can't use Designer for my illustrations without the ability to have arrowheads on the ends of paths.

[ronniemcbride]

God bless those who livelihood relies on arrowheads. What did people do prior to affinity? I just can't imagine anyone paying Adobe a subscription service just for arrow heads functionality. That some damn expensive arrow heads! Man I imagine once Affinity updates their app with arrow head support they going get a damn good bump in sales! I think I am going to design the ultimate arrow head app and focus it on the science, math, and medical community! I would be an millionaire for sure! 

 

hahahahaha! Come on laugh people it kinda funny how this one feature is the number one most complained about feature in the entire abundance of features not found in Affinity Designer!. I swear when you add this feature I going to to use the hell out of it. I gonna make everything I can out of Arrows I swear I gonna use this feature like it was the second coming of the light flare feature found in that other app!

[olibclarke]

@ronniemcbride: Well, it is a pretty basic feature. And if you need a lot of arrows for a diagram, making them one by one and adjusting the size and direction of the arrowheads on a path is kind of annoying. Nobody is using AD just for arrowheads - but they are the one, repetitive part of my workflow that is annoying in AD and easier in pretty much every other program right now. So it would be great to see them added!

 

Also, there is a huge opportunity for Affinity in the scientific/medical/education communities, precisely for the reason you mention - I don't need anything of great complexity (Illustrator is overkill and AD is much more intuitive to use), but I need a way to easily create clean diagrams combining images, labels, arrows and clean vector graphics to convey ideas, processes, research results etc. AD fills that hole perfectly at a very affordable price.

 

Cheers, Oliver.

[ronniemcbride]

@ronniemcbride: Well, it is a pretty basic feature. And if you need a lot of arrows for a diagram, making them one by one and adjusting the size and direction of the arrowheads on a path is kind of annoying. Nobody is using AD just for arrowheads - but they are the one, repetitive part of my workflow that is annoying in AD and easier in pretty much every other program right now. So it would be great to see them added!

 

Also, there is a huge opportunity for Affinity in the scientific/medical/education communities, precisely for the reason you mention - I don't need anything of great complexity (Illustrator is overkill and AD is much more intuitive to use), but I need a way to easily create clean diagrams combining images, labels, arrows and clean vector graphics to convey ideas, processes, research results etc. AD fills that hole perfectly at a very affordable price.

 

Cheers, Oliver.

 

I totally understand... I just could not resist making little fun of the whole thing at the expense of others pain, it is the cynic in me. Those that really need arrows don't take me so seriously. I am only poking fun! Please don't hunt me down, hog tie me and beat me with a wet noodle. When arrows get here I going to coin that day International Affinity Arrow Day!

 

5 years from now when Affinity presents application development timeline at the next apple conference they better highlight the day arrowheads on a stroke was added with smiley faces, stars and user base growth stats! 

[Mr. K]

I need find and replace text too, seriously, so not just arrowheads. I own CS 5, and when it comes time to do a drawing I have to ask myself is it more efficient to use AI or AD? As of now the answer is AI, and that makes me sad.

[socapex]

The team has to sit down and design the greatest arrow tool ever. I don't expect anything less from them as the whole software proves they're capable. They just need to put some time aside for it.

 

So please team managers, your current arrow tool is an insult, make some time for a new arrow tool Done Right ^TM

[Alaska]

Coming up on a year... any updates on this?

[Alaska]

Wow, guess not.  That's pretty disappointing.

[MEB]

Hi Alasca,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

No news here yet, sorry.  The dev team has been busy with other features as you can see from recent announcements. 

There's still a handful of features to be implemented from out roadmap - arrows included - so they will come at some point. 

Bear with us. I know this one was requested long ago but it's impossible to please everyone/implement all that fast. We will get there.

[JET_Affinity]

Whenever someone mentions a missing feature (of which there are many) in the Windows Beta, some of the developers keep preaching to us that this is a "professional" application (as if every drawing program vendor doesn't make the same claim) and the desire to avoid tool glut, etc., etc.

I'm all for very careful and thoughtful development to maintain something that has been long ago lost: interface elegance. A large part of that is feature versatility and integration.

So when the developers do get around to adding arrowheads, I seriously hope they don't just do it in yet another "me, too" conventional-wisdom standalone manner. Old-style arrowhead features are among the least elegant toolsets in existing mainstream drawing programs.

Arrowheads should be an integral part of a more broadly-capable "path endings" and "symbols library" feature set which serves multiple purposes.

I mean"symbol" in the data-efficiency sense that the element's artwork is only stored in the file once and individual instances of it are references. The instances can have somewhat different attributes (scale, rotation), but still exist as references to the single stored element unless and until the user makes them standalone. As long as they are linked instances, they can be edited and the edit cascades throughout the document. The user-created stored libraries of symbols should be assignable at the application level, not just the document level. Arrowheads would simply be one such user-editable library.

By "path endings" I mean simply the ability to "attach" any stored symbol to the endpoint(s) of a path, with appropriate positioning options (centered on the endpoint or not extending beyond the endpoint; rotated to maintain tangency with the segment, or unrotated).

I think someone in this thread mentioned Illustrator's "Pattern Brushes" and that's a case-in-point. Illustrator's Pattern Brush end "tiles," its Symbols, and its crudely-implemented user-defined Arrowheads are a hodge-podge of separate scattered features, when they could have (and should have) been integrated into a single powerful interface.

 

Part and parcel of this greater integrated functionality, though, is something few programs offer: The ability to assign multiple strokes (and fills) to a single path. Illustrator started it and FreeHand had it (more cleanly interfaced) before Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia.

The primary thing Affinity has going for it right now is its "starting-with-a-clean-slate" status. But its feature set has a lot of holes in it. The elegance will be lost if those holes are filled by just pilling on a bunch of individual grab-bag features mimicking the stale conventional-wisdom. That's the fallacy of Illustrator's "plug-in" development model.

JET

[bpedit]

Arrowheads may be among the "least elegant" but are for me and others among the most useful tools. Personally, I've never found a use for placing clubs, spades,hearts or even circles at the ends of lines, especially with enough frequency to need a tool.  I don't mind these features eventually being provided for those with a need but I'd hate to see arrowheads held hostage to await this capability.

[olibclarke]

So I guess no arrowheads until 1.6 or 1.7, given they are absent in the 1.5 beta? That is a little disheartening, although I do very much appreciate the new features in 1.5, particularly as regards snapping and measurements.

[ygoe]

So I've made my custom arrow heads from lines and triangles a lot of times, and now I find the triangles are all a bit to small. Now I'll go through my document and resize all of them individually by dragging them (with Ctrl+Shift to keep them centred) and hope it'll all be about the same amount. I already have set two decimals for millimetres so any inaccuracies should at least be invisible. Still it would be much easier to change this if I could just set a different scale for all arrow lines.

 

I like open arrow heads more but they're just impossible much work to draw. Don't even think of resizing those ever again!

[jfarras]

It's a shame!

 

I bought Affinity Designer just the first day it was released at AppleStore. An awesome program with a nasty surprise: no arrowheads. It was my fault not to check for this feature... I just couldn't conceive a "design" program without it, so I didn't check! I'm not in the "artist" side. I need Designer for "technical" illustration and I have to draw lots and lots of arrowheads in my work. In my case, no arrowheads implies no use for Designer.

 

As arrowheads were in the todo list, I considered it was "fair" enough to launch the initial release without them. I didn't bother too when arrow heads did not appeared in next releases. A question of developer's priorities... fair enough! And I trusted them when they stated in the forums that implementing arrowheads was in their minds.

 

But now is version 1.5 and still no arrowheads. Arrowheads are so basic for technical workflow that I consider such delay absolutely unfair. Affinity should have CLEARLY stated from the beginning that Designer would remain subpar in the "technical" field for long!

 

Now, I really regret to have bought that application. It's a shame!

[MattP]

...and it really is in our minds, and it really does get talked about pretty-much weekly, and it really will get done.

 

Sorry that it hasn't appeared yet and that it's affecting you so adversely :(

Matt

[ronnyb]

Have you tried making your arrowheads into Symbols? I imagine if you update the master object, all the instances will update as well...

 

 

So I've made my custom arrow heads from lines and triangles a lot of times, and now I find the triangles are all a bit to small. Now I'll go through my document and resize all of them individually by dragging them (with Ctrl+Shift to keep them centred) and hope it'll all be about the same amount. I already have set two decimals for millimetres so any inaccuracies should at least be invisible. Still it would be much easier to change this if I could just set a different scale for all arrow lines.

 

I like open arrow heads more but they're just impossible much work to draw. Don't even think of resizing those ever again!

[ronnyb]

and when it gets done, it will be the mother of all Arrowhead tools... right Matt? ;)

 

It seems to me that if you guys build a custom UI studio palette utilizing the Symbols and Constraints functionality to define the Arrowheads' properties, it would provide a great starting point for a powerful and robust Arrowhead system...

 

I can't wait to see the video when Arrowheads arrive; I can imagine an epic, Lord of the Rings-style battle scene where both sides unleash a hailstorm of custom designed arrows...   Hollywood, epic movie trailer voice: "In a world without the ability to customize arrowheads, ONE software design app decided to break all the rules..."    :lol:   :lol:   :lol:

 

...and it really is in our minds, and it really does get talked about pretty-much weekly, and it really will get done.

 

Sorry that it hasn't appeared yet and that it's affecting you so adversely :(

Matt

[Teo_]

I can't wait to see the video when Arrowheads arrive; I can imagine an epic, Lord of the Rings-style battle scene where both sides unleash a hailstorm of custom designed arrows...

And as usual, Legolas will have infinite arrowheads  ;)