Please fix snapping of shapes

[NotAffine]

So I tried making a shuriken. For that, I wanted (at first) to make a triangle and cut out a bit of that in the middle. I made a quite simple shape, wanted to duplicate that, flip it horizontally and then combine those. But there remains a seam, no matter how I snap the two together. 

Someone on an unofficial Affinity Discord Server (credits to gromofdoom) helped me out by saying the snapping was never really working in this software and I need to overlap the two halves, combine them and then delete the unneeded nodes. 

Why does Affinity make such a simple task this painful? That's a pretty difficult workflow for something that wants to be an Adobe alternative.

Or am I blind and there's actually a better way to do that? I attached my project file (with extended history in it!) so you can see what I did (there's much stuff I did which didn't make any sense, lol).

shuriken.afdesign

[Callum]

Hi Not Affine,

Welcome to the forums

If possible could you point out where the seam is that you are getting? Also you said you want to combine both shapes wouldn't subtracting the green shape from your triangle work better?

Thanks

C

[NotAffine]

Ah, damn, I uploaded the wrong file. Uploaded the final result but I forgot to save the history there. Uploading it here now. I'm sure you'll spot the seam in the middle of the green two curve layers.

They are snapped to each other but they still have a seam that only gets bigger the further you zoom in.

@Callum

shuriken (1).afdesign

Edited December 6, 2019 by NotAffine
added mention

[Dazzler]

They are actually positioned correctly, it's a visual thing that happens due to anti-aliasing of the edges of the layer.

To solve this, click on each of the green layers and click the cog icon at the top of the layers panel. Then in the dialogue that pops up, select the coverage map and drag the left hand point up to make a straight line across the top and it'll solve your issue.

[NotAffine]

3 hours ago, Dazzler said:

To solve this, click on each of the green layers and click the cog icon at the top of the layers panel. Then in the dialogue that pops up, select the coverage map and drag the left hand point up to make a straight line across the top and it'll solve your issue.

This only solves the issue visually. They're still two different shapes. You can see that if you zoom in quite a bit. Or if you let Designer show you the nodes.

[lacerto]

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[NotAffine]

4 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The nodes can be merged but only with considerable effort

Exactly. I managed to do it with a different method but it was a comparable effort to do so. This could be improved greatly by "just" fixing the snapping, I think. Or, if the actual problem arises because of some problems with the shapes themselves, there should be an option to see/fix those issues!

Do you agree?

[Move Along People]

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[NotAffine]

5 minutes ago, haakoo said:

zoom in very closely bring them both to the document snapline,then its no effort to add both the green shapes together
 

I think you didn't get the problem.

1. The snapping itself should snap them together so you don't need to do that in the first place.

2. If you do what you said and then zoom in even further, you'll see either that the shapes still don't meet or that the shapes already overlap. You can't possibly put them together just like that, there'll be always a zoom level where it doesn't fit any more.

[lacerto]

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[NotAffine]

1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

But I am condient that Affinity will get these wrinkles smoothed out eventually.

The one who helped me combine the shapes originally said Affinity gets said to fix that since around 2015 and they still haven't done that. Of course I can't just believe such a loose statement but if that's remotely true it's pretty sad.

This makes working with symmetrical shapes (which are quite common) soo much worse than in Illustrator. If you have a bigger project with symmetrical shapes you'll loose hours on these small details.

[lacerto]

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[Move Along People]

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[NotAffine]

6 minutes ago, haakoo said:

No, you simply didn't snap as you can see, it just snapped(green line) and I made it work like you wanted it

I could've sworn I tried the same thing but yeah, it works now. But only if I select the nodes (with the node tool selected) and not the whole curve (with the transform tool selected). Right?

[Move Along People]

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[lacerto]

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[R C-R]

10 hours ago, NotAffine said:

But only if I select the nodes (with the node tool selected) and not the whole curve (with the transform tool selected).

The Curve snapping: nodes and control handles video tutorial explains how each of the Node Tool's "Snap" options on the context toolbar work. As mentioned at around 0:40 in the video these snapping options are completely independent of the "global" snapping options on the main toolbar.