When enabled you can visually adjust the alignment or even, for example, ‘align to centre, snapped to the left edge of this object’ by simply click/dragging. Many tools now allow for Alignment widgets, which you can toggle the visibility of in the context toolbar.The Pencil Tool now offers a ‘sculpt’ mode that allows for extending or manipulating curves in a more natural way.The Node Tool now allows for lasso selection of nodes by holding the Alt/Option key and dragging a selection lasso.The Node Tool can now auto-snap nodes if you drag a node from one curve over the top of a node from another (selected) curve and pause, it will offer to snap to the same geometry as the node you’re hovering over (ie, modify the on and off-curve nodes to match).The Pen Tool now has a rubber band mode and also a mode to allow future curves to be added to the current object’s curves.Node and Pen tools have a new Construction mode which gives easy access to common construction features to help you build complicated shapes or intersections accurately and easily.

The Node Tool has a new Transform Mode which provides a containing box for the selected nodes and allows for more freeform editing of the nodes.

With a wealth of new features and fixes, here’s some of the things you can look forward to: Tools Owners of Affinity Designer on Mac or Windows can now download and test the beta of version of 1.7. The next update to Affinity Designer 1.7 for Mac and Windows isn’t too far away, and if you fancy taking part in the beta you can download it now…

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