Artboard distribution and importing from illustration

[emout]

Dear Affinity Developer Team.

I purchased Affinity designer a few months ago but I still couldn't switch from illustrator yet and I feel very frustrated about it.  There are two reasons.  

1. When I import an illustrator file the name of the artboards doesn't show up which is very very important for me because the name of the artboards include very important data for my workflow.

2. The creating artboards on Affinity designer is a huge problem when you need to need create 500 artboards. The artboards are impossible to distribute.

I would be very happy if you can update us on this matter. I really like affinity and I am ready to switch but because of these problems, it makes it impossible for me to switch because I have thousands of illustrator files with lots of files with dartboard names in them.

Warm Regards,

OZ

[dominik]

3 hours ago, emout said:

The artboards are impossible to distribute.

Hello @emout,

welcome to the forum.

What do you mean by 'distribute arboards'? Is it that you want to align them equally spaced? This should work like with other vector objects, too: 'Layer > Alignment' and then choose your desired way of alignment and distribution.

d.

[emout]

36 minutes ago, dominik said:

Hello @emout,

welcome to the forum.

What do you mean by 'distribute arboards'? Is it that you want to align them equally spaced? This should work like with other vector objects, too: 'Layer > Alignment' and then choose your desired way of alignment and distribution.

d.

Nice to meet you @Dominik,

Lets say, I would like to create 200 artboards with 5 columns and 40 rows with 100px space between them. Is there an easy way to do this?

I tried to do it with converting objects to artboards but the system doesn't let me convert multiple objects to artboards.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, emout said:

Lets say, I would like to create 200 artboards with 5 columns and 40 rows with 100px space between them. Is there an easy way to do this?

1. Create an artboard.
2. Ctrl/Cmd J to duplicate it 4 times.
3. Select all 5 artboards.
4. Click the Arrange button on the Toolbar. Choose Align Horizontally. Uncheck auto-distribute, and put 100px in the box. Click OK.
5. Make sure all artboards are still selected in Layers panel, and group them (Ctrl/Cmd G).
6. With the group selected, Ctrl/Cmd J to duplicate it 40 times.
7. In the Layers panel, select all the groups.
8. Click the Arrange button on the Toolbar. Choose Align Vertically. Uncheck auto-distribute, and put 100px in the box. Click OK.

You will, of course, end up with 200 artboards all named Artboard1, and 40 groups all name Group1. You'll need to do the appropriate ungrouping and renaming.

[dominik]

1 hour ago, emout said:

Lets say, I would like to create 200 artboards with 5 columns and 40 rows with 100px space between them. Is there an easy way to do this?

I assume there are several ways to accomplish this. I'd do it that way:

1. Create an artboard of e.g. 400x500px. Switch to the Move Tool (V).
2. Press CTRL+J > this creates a copy of the artboard right on top of it.
3. In the transform panel I see a value of X=0 and Y=0. If this is not the case, type in these values.
4. With the top most artboard still selected, type in an X value of 500px. This moves the artboard to exactly 100px right of the first artboard.
5. Press CTRL+J again > this creates the next artboard.
6. Move this to an X value of 1000 px. Again it is spaced 100px right of the (now) middle artboard.
7. Repeat until you created five artboards.
8. Now select them all by SHIFT clicking on each of them (or in the layers panel).
9. Hit CTRL+ J and all of them get duplicated. Make sure they are all selected.
10. Type in a Y value of 600px. Five artboards get moved down to 100px below the first five artboards.

I hope you get the hang of it. Repeat until you have 40 rows.

A second way to do this which will come closer to your question to distribute the artboards.

1. Create an artboard of your choice. Hit CTRL+J four times to have five artboards on top of each other.
2. Select all of them. This only works in the layers panel.
3. Click on the 'Alignement Icon' on the toolbar.
4. In the row 'Align Horizontally' click on the right most icon 'Space Horizontally'.
5. Uncheck 'Autodistribute' and type in your desired space between the artboards.
6. Hit OK > now you created your first row of artboards.

To create the other rows you would use 'Space Vertically'.

I hope that helps. Cheers,
d.

[dominik]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

1. Create an artboard.
2. Ctrl/Cmd J to duplicate it 4 times.
3. Select all 5 artboards.
4. Click the Arrange button on the Toolbar. Choose Align Horizontally. Uncheck auto-distribute, and put 100px in the box. Click OK.
5. Make sure all artboards are still selected in Layers panel, and group them (Ctrl/Cmd G).
6. With the group selected, Ctrl/Cmd J to duplicate it 40 times.
7. In the Layers panel, select all the groups.
8. Click the Arrange button on the Toolbar. Choose Align Vertically. Uncheck auto-distribute, and put 100px in the box. Click OK.

You will, of course, end up with 200 artboards all named Artboard1, and 40 groups all name Group1. You'll need to do the appropriate ungrouping and renaming.

You hit me by the minute 

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, emout said:

with 100px space between them

How important is it?

Artboards are independent workspaces, and their absolute position has no meaning in export.

[emout]

Dear @Dominic and @walt.farrell

Thank you for your quick responses. I wasn't expecting to be able to group artboards. That does the trick for distributing artboards. But I sometimes need to redistribute all the artboards. Let's say I start working on the project with 5 rows and suddenly I need to see the project in 6 rows. Then I need to redistribute all the artboards because the artboard names are unique to each design. With this solution, I will have to group every 6 artboards and redistribute them. The problem is that each 6 artboards are now in two rows. So the artboards will be mixed up. Let's say it was going like 1,2,3,4,5 This time it will be like 1,4,3,6,5,2. And there are 500  artboards.

I found another missing feature while testing. I can't see artboard bounds when I place them in another artboard. Let's say I have 100x100 canvas and a 70x70 canvas in it. I have to press the Outline View Mode button every time I need to see the artboard. There must be a view mode that shows canvas bounds.

The third missing thing is artboard names of the old illustrator files. I hope the developers team can solve it. I have thousands of valuable illustrator files that contain very important artboard names. And I don't want to keep adobe programs on my computer.

After spotting the missing things I realized that each artboard has its own x,y attributes when I copy paste my designs to an other software. Also each artboard has its own grids. This is a big plus for Affinity 

@Pšenda Artboards are life-saving when you need to do a Font design that includes multiple vector elements which have to be exported afterward. While you work on the project, you desire to see the whole objects and the entire process aligned into grids before you start on the project. 

 

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, emout said:

Artboards are life-saving when you need to do a Font design that includes multiple vector elements which have to be exported afterward.

And it's not better to work with a single canvas/artboard, and use a grid with spaces, that visually separates individual vector elements? Then create individual slices with the necessary naming for export.

Maybe some example of what you really need would be useful.

[emout]

Quote

And it's not better to work with a single canvas/artboard, and use a grid with spaces, that visually separates individual vector elements? Then create individual slices with the necessary naming for export.

Maybe some example of what you really need would be useful.

That's the whole point actually. Artboards are easy to customize when there is a problem in the workflow. Slices are not easy to edit once created. Artboards who act like slices is a problematic solution. If this problem is not easy to solve or points out a structural problem within Affinity software development then Affinity is no use for a lot of designers.

Example: Think about an illustrator who is creating a lot of illustrations for a game lets say houses, characters, items etc. Typedesigner who is working on letters or an Icon designer creating thousands of icons. These type of designers can't work on a single canvas. They have to be able to modify a lot of canvases at the same time.

This is a fundamental problem. If affinity team can solve it, I promise you all the hardcore designers will drop illustrator.

[nezumi]

Way over year later I would like to remind devs about this thread.
I dont know how hard it would be to create, but man I would absolutely LOVE to be able to set automatic artboards distribution. When creating document it would be cool to have an option to set distribution to "grid" instead of "row", with maximum amount of artboards in the row. When we would reach limit (say 5 in the row) the next artboard would be created under the first one, starting another line of artboards, next 5 and again jump to another line, creating third row and so on. Instead of having to manually fiddle with artboards distribution that would be very cool solution. I admit not having it is not a deal breaker but in my work I would find it massively helpful.