Greenbeetle

Aha! Brilliant. Actually that's tidier than Photoshop... good one. Much obliged, MEB.

I have it in Photo persona... Is there a menu or panel workaround? In Photoshop there's a Paths panel, and you can fill and stroke, and convert backwards and forwards to paths (curves) and marquee selection. The only obvious workaround is to make the shape, fill it, select it and delete the fill. But that's mad...

Nope. I have the curve selected, control left-click on the thumbnail and I'm just getting the contextual menu. If the shape/curve is filled, I can cmd+left+click and get a selection marquee. if it's just something I've traced, nothing.

Thanks, Garry. Sorry, I typed in haste. Yes, that's what I've been doing. Left click on the thumbnail in the layers panel. I'm going to restart the app, as this seems a bit daft... Will report back.

This should be very simple, but all the tutorials are telling me to control click on the layer, which just brings up a contextual dropdown. I'm on a Mac, so maybe this is the issue? Thanks for looking...

@Hangman: You're spot on with this... It took just one misaligned anchor point to cause the issue. Why it doesn't happen every time is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps there are additional factors at play with this particular outline. I did notice that the culprit had an off-axis handle alignment in addition to the extra anchor point... Either way, it's reassuring to know that a quick clean-up is sufficient to fix the problem. Thanks again for the lesson!

@Old Bruce: Yes, I got the same result with the flattened PDF... Under the circumstances that may be my best bet for delivering the drawings. I tried expanding everything, but I was still having problems elsewhere. @Hangman: Thanks for all your work here, much appreciated! The idea that loose, misaligned and untidy anchor points on the paths could cause a black fill issue like this is really surprising. I intend to check this out carefully. I'm going to blame my shoddy art on working at speed in unfamiliar software (Illustrator user). My biggest gripe with Designer is the (to me) maddening and erratic behaviour of the snapping options, which appear to be focused on fastening every anchor point marginally off target every single time.

That's interesting Old Bruce, thank you! If you wouldn't mind... Could you explain a little further? Will this often/always happen when a heavy outline is placed on top, or is it just bad practice on my part? I take it it's not related to the blacked-out clipping that defeats exporting as SVG,EPS etc? This is a small part of a much larger illustration, and something I could easily miss, so it would be great if I could get it right from the start. Thanks again for your time! LM

Hi, When exporting a file to PDF, I'm encountering blacked out areas of the drawing. Is this just an example of Affinity vector files being generally un-exportable, or is there a specific problem with areas such as this example? Thanks for looking, LM Test valve.afdesign

Thanks, Garry! You're a life saver, it was driving me round the twist. I suppose that's a useful option if you're up to speed, but I couldn't find anything in the Help manual under "Grouping Objects". Much obliged, LM

Hi, The basic Move Tool selection of a group is no longer working for me... Unless I first select the group in the Layers palette, only the object my cursor lands on is selected. Can anyone throw any light on this? Could well be user error, but it's a major change in use that's causing real problems in my work. Thanks for looking, LM

I agree... Excellent idea, especially combined with the slider effect, rendered useless. In my current work file, I can't see anything through the x-ray layer at all. To the point where I'm wondering if it's actually failed in some way.

Thanks for the reply NPM... I can't replicate the Alt.drag, but I didn't say I was on a Mac. I have found that control>drag, followed by drag, does select all nodes beneath. It seems slow and awkward, but it does the job!

If I use the node tool to drag over an area containing nodes, the most I can reveal are those on the top layer, and only if I cover the entirety of the shape. I need to drag a second time to actually select them (as far as I can tell. I'm a new user). Sometimes a control-drag, reveals nodes below, and sometimes I can select them, but not always. Is there a hidden command I'm missing? Illustrator has a direct selection tool that reveals and selects everything within the dragged area, that's not locked. It's very useful. Thanks!

I can't expand a stroke with an arrow head... Is this another aspect of the same bug?