Affinity Designer Customer Beta RC1 (1.1.2.23308)

[specworkfan]

Thank you very much! You made my night. I have been through all the official tutorials and have been learning the interface quite tediously, but missed this. 

 

I also edited my reply in the other forum to bring them here in case they need the answer. I was confused when MEB replied correctly with text only to a query which included screenshots. A screenshot is worth a fair few hours in time saved.   :)

Specworkfan,

 

Pressure sensitivity DOES work in the current AD beta, they just forgot to have the Controller set to Pressure by default instead of None. Just change the settings and have fun!

 

Screen Shot 2015-03-04 at 11.42.31 PM.JPG

[ronnyb]

Yes, I try to show more than tell people, it helps SOOO much :) Glad it's making you hang around and help make the Affinity suite the best it can be :)

[Dave Harris]

The Insert Filler Text command shouldn't be available for the Art Text tool when clicking over a path (text-to-path function).

 

I beg to differ. Filler Text doesn't make sense for normal Art Text, because that has no set size to fill. However, path text does have a natural limit, namely the length of the path, so it does make sense to fill it. I've fixed it so it works in the next beta/RC.

 

It's not as useful as one might hope, because we use both sides of the curve so you get more text than you expect, but it's fun to play with (because the filler text expands dynamically as the path gets longer).

[Garytagreg]

Hi

 

I've come across something that reliably causes a crash of this beta when using the "Divide" operation on the main toolbar.

 

I've uploaded an example file to illustrate it.

 

Instructions

Select all the ellipses in "Layer 1"

Then click "Divide" in the operations toolbar.

This crashes the beta (1.1.2.23308) every time for me.

 

Hope it helps :)

Crash.afdesign

[Garytagreg]

By the way, opening the above crash.afdesign file and following the same process also crashes the Photo beta.

[MattP]

Thanks, Gary! :)

[A_B_C]

Hi Matt,

 

another thing I was wondering about ... whenever I bake my corners, I do get different kinds of nodes on the resulting path. I don’t know if that has been mentioned already, but I just wondered, why the starting node of the resulting path is always a "corner" node (cusp node)? Does that make sense?  :unsure:

 

And this node has a somewhat strange appearance to me ... it looks as if there were two very close nodes on the canvas ... but when you drag the node to another position, you notice that there is only one ...

 

Hope you were able to figure out what happens on the character panel yesterday ...

 

Cheers,

Alex  :)

[MattP]

Thanks, Alex! I'll sort out that corner-baking in a bit :) I think Andy is still looking into the character panel weirdness... :(

[A_B_C]

Thank you both ...  :)

 

And a little postscript ... in cases like the following the handles enclosed by the red circle seem to be superfluous ... we could just use cusp nodes when baking the corners and dispense with them, right? ...  :unsure:

[A_B_C]

I also tried to figure out if there is a pattern regarding the font families and styles, but my results were inconclusive ... perhaps Andy should have a look at the App Store Version (1.1.2) as well ... in that version all styles of a font family – strangely except the italic styles – are listed in the family list on my Lion machine, while the style list does not get populated at all ...

 

I don’t know if that provides an additional hint ...  :unsure:

[Nguyen Ha]

I also get crashed when exporting over existing file

[specworkfan]

My Mac Mini's internal SATA III connection stopped working so I have put the SSD in an external USB 3.0 (SATA II, 3Gbps only) enclosure. It gets ~265MB/s speed for both read and write, which is slightly faster than the same model SSD in my Macbook with SATA II.

Affinity Designer was lagging very badly with the vector brushes, so I put it to the test on my 2010 Macbook (slightly worse CPU benchmark scores than the Mac Mini, and half the RAM) which has a clone from yesterday of the Mac Mini in it. There is almost no lag in normal situations.

Is Affinity Designer writing things to the disk a lot to cause this? The USB Enclosure has faster read and write times than the internal SATA connection of the Macbook Pro (250 MB/s),  but I wonder if access time is greater? Maybe this is what is causing the lag in the Mac Mini?  I also noticed when zoomed in the lag is more evident.

 

File Notes:

 

The file I am working with is only vector besides two background pixel layers, and about 100mb in size with about 400 shapes contained within 30 layers. 

[dbelts]

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) Running OSX Yosemite 10.10.2:

 

Now that I have downloaded AF 1.1.2.23308 I can't export files AT ALL. 

 

Is there a fix to this? It's quite frustrating :(

 

Correction**: 

 

After reinstalling the beta, it seems that the export function has begun to work again. However, only after I opened and closed the app a few times.

 

Bizarre :( 

[specworkfan]

I found an enclosure with a blinking LED when the drive is active. There was no drive access when making strokes, but still the same problem. I had over 9GB of RAM available, an idle CPU, and it still lagged.

 

With many layers, the program lags much more. There is something not efficient somewhere. It seems to be worse when zoomed in after double clicking the layer to focus (a very nice feature). Switching off the layers alleviates the stroke lag somewhat, but it lags well before other vector apps. 

 

It might be a good idea to have a command to focus and switch off all the other layers until this lag is dealt with better. 

 

 

My Mac Mini's internal SATA III connection stopped working so I have put the SSD in an external USB 3.0 (SATA II, 3Gbps only) enclosure. It gets ~265MB/s speed for both read and write, which is slightly faster than the same model SSD in my Macbook with SATA II.

Affinity Designer was lagging very badly with the vector brushes, so I put it to the test on my 2010 Macbook (slightly worse CPU benchmark scores than the Mac Mini, and half the RAM) which has a clone from yesterday of the Mac Mini in it. There is almost no lag in normal situations.

Is Affinity Designer writing things to the disk a lot to cause this? The USB Enclosure has faster read and write times than the internal SATA connection of the Macbook Pro (250 MB/s),  but I wonder if access time is greater? Maybe this is what is causing the lag in the Mac Mini?  I also noticed when zoomed in the lag is more evident.

 

File Notes:

 

The file I am working with is only vector besides two background pixel layers, and about 100mb in size with about 400 shapes contained within 30 layers. 

[Signguy]

I'm having issues with this current Beta with creating an offset path.  

 

First issue:  type some text using art text tool and click on Convert to Curves.  Even though Move tool is selected, you have to click on move tool again in order for fill and stroke options will show up in context toolbar.  This behavior was not needed in previous beta.

 

When trying to expand the text and use divide and add operations, I am getting frequent crashes and objects don't always get added together.  Previous beta didn't have the same issues.

[Signguy]

Open up the attached file.  Click on Divide in operations.  Objects do not get divided as they did in previous version and if you next click on add, they are not joined.  Sometimes nodes get added and AD leaves many nodes behind not adding all nodes together. Also, adding/Union Nodes takes a long time and sometimes results in a crash.

Untitled.afdesign

[VanHeber]

Hi,

What about the feature (very important) linked files?

I like to work with a lot of afdesign files and place they linked into another afdesign file. Like photoshop works!

Thanks, and keep the good work,

Best,

 

Weber

[A_B_C]

Yes, and unfortunately the document embedding feature as detailed here:

 

 

... does not work in OS X Lion. Trying to embed an .afdesign document into another via the Place Image Tool simply crashes the app. I can send you a crash report if you like ...  :(

[oWWo]

Hi,

I just saw VanHeber's post. I would like the "linking" feature too. It is different from the current "Place Image Tool".

ex. If I made change the embedded file-A and all my files which content embedded file-A will updated too.

 

Thanks.

 

[Sergio Maldonado]

Hi!

 

This is not exactly a bug, but a usability suggestion, as you are currently working to improve the tabs for multiple documents.

 

The contrast was increased in this beta, but I still find a little bit confusing which tab is active or inactive. And as a UI/UX designer I dare to suggest a change in the tab's colours. I mean, not to use different colours, but to swap the active tab to dark grey and the inactive tab to light grey. It's jus a matter of perception: the dark tab seems to belong to the document and the light one to the toolbar.

 

Here's better explained:

 

[MattP]

Hi Sergio,

 

I think the design is meant to echo that found in Safari - that's not to say there isn't room for improvement, so thank you for your suggestion :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[ronnyb]

Guys, I found a redraw bug, occurring in both AD and AP:

 

1. Create a New document, Pixel Persona (for AD)

2. Select Brush tool

3. Increase brush size to about 1" x 1" on screen

4. Set your colors to default black & white (when are you adding the d keyboard equivalent to reset colors to default black and white?)

5. Click and drag, and without releasing, press x to swap colors, (try it repeatedly to enhance effect).

6. Results are messed up. (Brush tool draws with a solid square nozzle)

[Andrew Tang]

Yes, and unfortunately the document embedding feature as detailed here:

 

 

... does not work in OS X Lion. Trying to embed an .afdesign document into another via the Place Image Tool simply crashes the app. I can send you a crash report if you like ...  :(

 

This has be fixed and will be in the next release! :)

[lenogre]

In the first release of AD, we could see the thumbnail of the file before opening (with space bar). In AD beta, this feature doesn't work.

 

Negative values for rotation still doesn't work.

 

For froggies, could you change the sign of decimal (, instead .). I must always type . rather ,

 

French translation is not optimized (lot of words cutted…)

[smallreflection]

I'm eager to see the beta launch, but I've tested a copy of an email design from our office server in the beta, and so far it's crashing the program almost single time on attempted save. This isn't happening in the App Store release. :(