squeezeboxpress

Do you understand what I'm trying to do? This answer doesn't help me understand how I can move different objects to different parts of the screen without changing their appearance. My experience with design programs is VERY limited and so far I've found that when things are in different layers it makes them very complicated to work with. I would be happy to ungroup, then select things and re-group them, but I can't even figure out how to select multiple objects without clicking each one individually, and sometimes I have dozens of lines that need to stay together! Also, I haven't been able to click on ungroup with my original file. The only way I've been able to separate them is to "divide", which in my experience so far has made much more work for me and made everything on my screen look completely different. I need to understand this for my work, and I am hoping someone can explain to me clearly and very simply how to move different objects apart from each other without changing the shape of them, outlining them, filling them in with black, or having to click on each tiny line from a different layer by hand in a particular order.

Hi! I'm new to affinity designer and have very minimal experience in the past with illustrator. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to separate different vector objects from each other (I don't need to do anything fancy with them, just adjust size and position) when I import them all in one file, already traced. In illustrator I could simply "ungroup" them, which was exactly what I wanted. Nothing about them was fundamentally changed, they just weren't locked together anymore. I've tried dividing with and without a fill color, and neither is working. Is there a solution that I don't know about? p.s. I've posted in the past and a lot of people tried to convince me that I shouldn't be auto-tracing things. I understand the arguments, and I don't really want to go over that again, I just want a clear answer to my question above: is it possible to manipulate vector objects separately that were imported together without making a million layers or filling things in with different colors, or outlining them all etc.

owenr, if I click on the inner shapes, subtract is greyed out and not clickable...

Oops! Here's what I was trying to attach. I appreciate what you're saying about automatic tracing, but it's something I did quite often in illustrator with no problems, so I know it's possible! I sometimes draw things much more complicated than this little scene, which would take forever to trace by hand, and I only ever work in black and white (in fact, another question I have is how to make sure something is 100% black without any C, M, or Y, so that my images can be made into a digital negative). winter2017question.afdesign

Hi there! I drew a picture, scanned and vectorized it, cleaned up the edges, and everything was looking good until I tried to separate the different objects using layer>geometry>divide. Suddenly all the white spaces in my drawing filled in with black! I'm guessing it's because the insides of the lines were a shape instead of just empty background... Is there a way I can prevent/fix this without going back to the original scan and changing the tracing settings (I used inkscape for the tracing) so that I don't lose the work I did smootjing and fixing it up? Thanks. The file attached has the original image below and a version I copied and then divided above.