Coming from Adobe Illustrator

[ErichBoehm]

Recently moved to Affinity Designer for financial reasons.  So far, I am having a great time. Most things are falling into place.  However there are a few things that I have need of that I used frequently in Illustrator that I can't quite seem to figure out how to do in designer.  Any ideas would be much appreciated.

1)  In illustrator, you can distribute objects evenly along a path.  How does you do this in Designer?

2) How does one join two points in Designer?

 

3)  How do you lock multiple objects at once?

4)  Is the an equivalent to Illustrators "round corner" option?  This is a great time saver because you can just roughly draw out the paths you need and Illustrator takes care of the rest.

5)  Is it possible to change the opacity of multiple objects?

I think that's about it.  I can't wait to see where this goes in the future.  

[MEB]

Hi ErichBoehm,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

1. Currently there's no blend along a path (and blend tool) functionality in Designer. There's a few work arounds using raster brushes applied to vector paths and (custom) fonts (used in conjunction with tex-on-a-path functionality) which may help in some cases.

 

2. See clip below. You can also click the same Join Curves button in the context toolbar using the Node tool without overlapping the nodes of the paths to join them (the closest nodes between the two curves) through a segment. You can assign a shortcut to both Join and Break Curves commands to speed up these operations in Affinity Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts section.

 

 

3. Select all the objects you want to lock on the canvas or in the Layers panel then click on the padlock icon on the top left of the Layers panel to lock them all.

 

4. Check the Corner Tool in Designer. You can use it to apply live corners to sharp nodes. You can also select multiple nodes (corners) and round them all at once. It's the fourth icon on the toolbar on the left.

 

5. Yes, select all the objects you want to change the opacity on the canvas or in the Layers panel then change the Opacity value in the control on the top of the Layers panel. You can also use the 0-9 keys on your keyboard to quickly change the opacity of objects - pressing 5 sets the opacity to 50%; pressing 2 and 3 consecutively will set the opacity top 23% for example.

[ErichBoehm]

Hello!

Thank you for the advice!  Are there any plans for a blend tool?  I was also wonder, how does one convert text into paths in Designer?  Thank you so much again!
 

[gdenby]

Hi, ErichBoehm,

 

Text to path: Select text. The context tool bar across the top will have an option to click at the far right "Convert to curves." That does it. In the layer panel, you will see a new group of curves where there was a text layer. 

 

Replicate/blend is on the 1x road map. Promised before version 2. Looking back over the previous version upgrades periods, sometime in the next (+/-) 18 mo.

[ikirbster]

I know all of the Adobe Illustrator keyboard shortcuts that I need to work in Illustrator and many of them are the same in Designer. However, there are some that I can't figure out so I have two questions: Is there a list that compares keyboard shortcuts between Illustrator and Designer? Second question, how do you "Show Hidden Characters" in Designer? In AI is is CMD/SHFT/I.

[SrPx]

There used to be a user made Affinity vector nice graph with all default keys and icons in a sort of keyboard. But... remember you can go through the list in preferences and set your own keys....

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, SrPx said:

There used to be a user made Affinity vector nice graph with all default keys and icons in a sort of keyboard

There's also a set distributed by Serif. See this post in the Resources forum for a pointer.

[walt.farrell]

On 10/17/2018 at 5:33 PM, ikirbster said:

Second question, how do you "Show Hidden Characters" in Designer? In AI is is CMD/SHFT/I.

Publisher lets you do that by Text > Show Special Characters  (no shortcut by default, but you can set one) but it doesn't look like Designer or Photo have that yet. I expect they will get it in version 1.7.

[ikirbster]

Thanks for the help. I sure hope they add Text>Show Special Characters to Designer. I'm very glad that Affinity has Publisher as it was one of the missing pieces to replace Adobe (Bridge is the last missing piece) but except for books or brochures, I use Designer for design.