ajuliea

David, I can't thank you enough for your help. I have sent the file to my daughter for testing but she's having a busy day. Hoping for the best. Your generosity in giving your time to solve my problem is so appreciated. Have a great day!!

The file looks great, David. Thanks so much. Is it possible to compound further all the green elements. When I tried to compound the two horizontal lines, they once again disappeared. And when I tried to compound the upper and lower green layers, for eg., add is grayed out. Ideally, I would like just 3 elements in the final layers panel, one for each colour. But what you have done is amazing and I appreciate it so much. Also, I have other files like this one so not sure what to do going forward. Thanks, again!

David, thank you so much for all the work you have put into helping me with a solution. I am about to try it!

Thanks, that's a good idea to upload the file. Here it is. Thanks, all! I would be happy with a solution in Affinity to be able to end up with three compound paths, one for black, green and rust. Or alternatively, a solution to having the file workable (not showing with black in the circle) when opened in Illustrator. Thanks so much! Hello Spring Test File.afdesign

Thanks, David. Your answer is thorough but too technical for my skills. I have been trying to export from Affinity to Adobe Illustrator as a pdf. (I don't have Inkscape but I just purchased Illustrator to learn.) The file looks good on my screen but when I send it to my daughter who cuts the files for me, it looks like this. Two photos below. You can see it looks black in the layers panel. Not sure what happened in the transfer from Affinity to Illustrator! Any help is appreciated!

Thanks for your reply, Karin. The circles are done as ellipses. Hesitating to merge re: the advice from David.

Thanks, Alfred. I tried using Add and the same thing happened.

I am trying to prepare a file to be used on a laser cutter. I am trying to simplify the paths by creating a specific colour on my design for each task for eg. Cut, Engrave, Score. The first pic is my design before attempting this. I then ungrouped all, selected same colour, black. I then went to Layer-Create compound. All of the elements in black disappeared as shown in second pic. Help, please! Either to solve why it disappeared or to recommend another route for simplifying this file for selling as an svg for laser machines. Thanks so much!