duncancreamer

The problem, and why I am looking for a solution, is that it's going to be sent to a plotter type machine. It will cut/draw all the lines, masked or not. So it must be cut and removed.

Doesn't seem to work. Worked with a couple lines, but any more than a handful and it goes wonky. If combining a number of lines, they seem to join ends and make a funky pattern. I suppose this is the wrong forum because it's a different company's app though. I'll keep looking into it.

I can only see that it will do a single line at a time. This might not be the place, but if you can explain how to do multiple lines at a time, that might help.

I want a shape to not just mask another shape, but to crop each line that intersects with it. I then want to delete every line not within (or in some cases outside) a masking shape. Imagine a hundred squiggly vector lines filling a page. Now imagine a simple square, or maybe a circle (doesn't matter) placed over the lines. I want only the lines within the circle to remain. And I don't want to spend time deleting the ones outside the circle because in a more complex illustration, this is a daunting task. (see attached image) This is the one single thing I'm looking for in a vector program that isn't already there. I want to use vector lines as a sort of crosshatch or pattern, that are then contained within a shape. The vector lines have to be gone, not just hidden behind another shape. Also see this post/thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/115764-cropping-many-lines-at-once-designer/&do=findComment&comment=629829 Thank you.

So it's possible, but we have to wait for the developers get around to it. Fair enough. I would like to think that this would be a great feature for Affinity! It would be the only app out there that could do this - as far as I know. I have added this as a feature request in the appropriate forum.

You can't crop an open curve? Is this the big problem holding everything back? This surprises me a great deal. I have questions. Why can't it do this? Especially since I can manually put an extra point on the line that crosses a shape and then delete that segment (that intersects with the shape) to achieve the line crop. This can't be automated? I'll try to upload an example: (This is illustrator CS6 - it's what I know as I am still learning the Affinity, but the same technique works in both I think.) 1: A curved line, open. And a purple square, closed. 2: Square over line. 3: Remove foreground shape via Pathfinder tool = WRONG! 4, 5 & 6: But, it is possible to add the points manually, then select and delete the segment that intersects. This is what I am looking for - it works fine, manually. This can't be automated? Is there a decent explanation as to why? This seems like such a severe limitation.

The process you describe would take too many steps to be practical. Sorry for the potato quality image. It's a pen and ink drawing of my grandfather that I drew years ago. I'd like to recreate it in vector. As you can see, even in this poor quality image, the background is basically a bunch of swirly lines. The face, can be seen as a white shape over the lines. Redrawing the lines themselves is simple enough. But then cutting and deleting all the lines that intersect (or overlay, if we think of the white as a cut out shape) where the white face is… well, doing it by hand is neigh impossible. It's looking like this is a feature request, and a very difficult one to implement. I think it would make the product stand out though - Illustrator can't do it either (to the best of my knowledge.)

I want a shape to not just mask another shape, but to crop each line that intersects with it. I then want to delete every line not within (or in some cases outside) a masking shape. Imagine a hundred squiggly vector lines filling a page. Now imagine a simple square, or maybe a circle (doesn't matter) placed over the lines. I want only the lines within the circle to remain. And I don't want to spend time deleting the ones outside the circle because in a more complex illustration, this is a daunting task. (see attached image) Is this possible yet? This is the one single thing I'm looking for in a vector program. I want to use vector lines as a sort of crosshatch or pattern, that are then contained within a shape. The vector lines have to be gone, not just hidden behind another shape.

Thanks for the detailed reply. This would be a fine workaround for a single circle. But it gets impossibly complex with anything more detailed. This image of my Gramps is what I’m trying to get the Cricut to draw. (Sorry for the potato quality) You can see it’s prohibitively difficult to do it in any way that’s not automatic.

I've read this thread and I too am having a problem figuring out how to do a thing that I feel Affinity should be able to do: I want a shape to not just mask another shape, but to crop each line that intersects with it. 1. Imagine 10 horizontal lines equidistant apart and of the same length. 2. Now mask it with a circle. You now have a circle of 10 lines. The to and bottom will be the shortest as they are mostly masked off by the circle. The middle is the longest. 3. This looks right, but the problem happens when this type of masked file is brought to a Cricut machine (or other plotter). If the circle doesn't actually cut and remove the lines not revealed by the circle, the Cricut will still cut them. So in this example, what I want as an end product is ten cut lines that start small, get wider and then get small again. (A cut version of what is visually represented with the mask.) But what I will get is 10 lines of equal length cut, and then cut again by the circle, leaving loose bits of paper. I'm just using a simple example here, that could be done in other ways quite easily. I could just draw each line to begin and end on the circle edge and not do any masking or complicated boolean operations. This is fine for simple illustrations but becomes unmanageable on anything even a little complicated. So this is what I want Affinity to do. Is it possible? circle lines.svg

I want to use a plotter machine (cricut) to draw lines bound by a shape. I can easily make complicated lines and mask them with a clipping mask, but how can I export this as an .SVG file and not have the lines that are hidden by the Clipping Mask be drawn? I see no simple way to remove them - and I can't have the lines outlined into shapes. Surely there must be an automated way to do this? (This was made in illustrator (still learning the Affinity) and imported. I'd like to be able to draw just the lines within the cirscle, not the ones that are hidden.)