3. About Artboards, Layers & Objects

About Artboards, Layers & Objects

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    I have some questions about how layers, artboards and objects work together in VS. I mostly work with Affinity Designer, where the the artboards are a part of the layer palette, and layers and objects are a child layer to the artboard. Objects can be a child to a layer, but this is not mandatory. The Layer acts more like a loose group.

    The thing with this kind of organisation is, that it is easier to find which objects are on which artboard, which I find quite handy. Downside is that depending on the amount of artboards a document contains, the layer stack can become quite hard to navigate.

    In VS, artboards and layers and objects seem to work differently, and it is not apparent from the layer stack which object or layer is contained on which artboard. Opening the Canvas & Artboard panel does not make it easier to understand, in fact it it confuses me more as it another hierarchical element: a canvas. So if I understand correctly, a document contains one or multiple canvases, which can contain layers and artboards.

    Then there are master canvases and reference canvases too!

    This is quite a lot of elements! 🙂

    But what if I want to isolate the objects in a layer stack that are on 1 specific artboard? Is there a way to do this, or a preferences setting to change these things? I can imagine that other software works in the same way, but it is all rather confusing to me...

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    @postdes said in About Artboards, Layers & Objects:

    But what if I want to isolate the objects in a layer stack that are on 1 specific artboard? Is there a way to do this, or a preferences setting to change these things?

    It is not possible to limit objects to 1 specific artboard only (for now).

    In VS the artboards are similar to how they are done in Illustrator (for a single canvas). Probably it is easier to work with this model with some Illustrator background instead of Affinity.
    All objects on a canvas are part of a Layer hierarchy (layers at any depth, and groups) of that canvas.

    In VS, artboards are more like "guides", indicating areas for printing and /or exporting.
    A single canvas may contain any number of artboards, placed arbitrarily on the canvas.

    Objects can overlap multiple artboards, and the stacking order of objects across all artboards is the same.
    It is possible to clip objects to artboards, but this is just a "displaying" trick, and the object can still strech across multiple artboards (even if clipped on each).

    And about multiple canvases: yes, things get a bit complicated here. This part is more similar to what we have in InDesign with spreads (canvases) and pages (artboards). And I think the Corel multiple page model is also similar to this.

    But yes, it is possible to have multiple canvases in a single VS document each containing its own Layer hierarchy.
    Only one canvas can be visible in a document view, but multiple document views of the same document may show different canvases.

    Master canvases are similar to what we have as master pages in DTP apps. Sort of a template for canvas content.

    Reference canvases are "extra" canvases that are not included in printing or exporting, and can be used as a place for various assets like symbols, vector pattern or vector brush content, etc.
    Reference canvases become interesting once we get used to how styles and object roles work in VS (these are VS specific).
    For example, it is possible to "declare" all objects (with a name) on a reference canvas as symbols.
    Or all colors used to fill objects on a reference canvas as "color styles".
    And these remain dynamically linked: modifying them updates all their uses through the document.

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