Can't seem to fill the closed shape I created?

[panjakrejn]

Tried to create a relatively simple shape by creating  several half circle curves, copying and flipping them left to right, offsetting one vertically from the other slightly, and closing the ends with straight line segments.

The resulting shape has two spiral areas that twist around each other, which I want to fill, each with a different color - but Designer seems to be declining to fill either.

What's going wrong? Does it have to do with the color or shapes (or both) of the various nodes?

test.afdesign

[GarryP]

I think the first thing to say is that you only have one curve object (many segments, one curve), so being able to fill it with two colours won’t be possible (unless you use a Gradient Fill, and that’s not what you need, if I’ve understood correctly).
The second thing to mention is that you actually have a number of disconnected segments (see attached image where I have dragged some nodes around). You will need to join the segments up better to get them to fill as you require.
Basically, Designer is doing what you have told it to do but you haven’t drawn the shapes in the right way to get what you want.

[lacerto]

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[lacerto]

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[Move Along People]

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[R C-R]

10 hours ago, panjakrejn said:

Does it have to do with the color or shapes (or both) of the various nodes?

Red nodes indicate the end of the path defining a curve, so what you actually have is at least 7 separate curves (the end of some of your curves may be on the same point in the document).

[panjakrejn]

OK, lots of good feedback to process. FYI, the reason I am doing this design is simply to learn a little more about using Designer.

OK so I united (so I thought) the curves using Merge Geometry - but what I am learning now is that Merge Geometry doesn't do what I thought it did. At this point my guess is that the purpose of Merge Geometry is to just group up disparate paths without actually joining them.

So I have gone ahead and un-Merged the Geometry. I am going back to basics. I am trying to take two paths and turn them into one. I have two paths at the top, a curvy blue one and a straight green one. I am trying to make them a single connected path. Although it shows a blue box and not red at that node, I can tell they are not connected because a) I can click on each path separately using the Move tool and b) I can use the Node tool to drag the node that they are supposed to share and it only affects one of the paths, not both.

I have tried selecting both paths with the arrow tool, then selecting both nodes I want to join with the Node tool, then clicking Join Curves. I have tried clicking Close Curve instead. Either way, they remain two separate paths.

How to I make two paths into one in Designer? I feel like this should be an obvious, basic thing to do, and yet I am failing to figure this out?

[panjakrejn]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

Red nodes indicate the end of the path defining a curve, so what you actually have is at least 7 separate curves (the end of some of your curves may be on the same point in the document).

As you can see above, I was able to turn it into a blue node (somehow), but it's still separate, so that makes me think I still don't get red vs blue in AD.

[lacerto]

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[JimmyJack]

16 hours ago, panjakrejn said:

The resulting shape has two spiral areas that twist around each other, which I want to fill, each with a different color - but Designer seems to be declining to fill either.

If you want different colors you have to have two separate shapes. 
To create the single element to be duplicated, you'll have to lose the last "arc" segment.

3 hours ago, panjakrejn said:

How to I make two paths into one in Designer? 

The main problem though, (as can be seen in @GarryP's screenshot), is that all your curve segments are closed shapes masquerading as simple lines.
It's super easy to fall into that trap in AD (... cue pet peeve rant ). Anyway, you're not going to be able to join anything until you fix that.
Fortunately, it can be done en masse (see vid below) .... but, unfortunately, the node selection has to be one at a time (unless I'm missing how to select coincident groups and then group deselect just the tops or bottoms.... I can do it with a single set, just not groups). The aligning procedure/move was done to make that selection process easier after the node break.

@:25 I move all the selected nodes to the side just so you can see that the shapes are indeed all closed...
Even at the end here there are still some duplicate nodes.... another AD foible.

 

[panjakrejn]

54 minutes ago, JimmyJack said:

The main problem though, (as can be seen in @GarryP's screenshot), is that all your curve segments are closed shapes masquerading as simple lines.
It's super easy to fall into that trap in AD (... cue pet peeve rant ). Anyway, you're not going to be able to join anything until you fix that.
 

That's brilliant and makes total sense. I forgot that I originally created the arc with the circle shape tool. converted to pie, and set the hole radius to 100%. And even though I wanted to create a half circle line path, I was still creating a circle shape, just distorted. What I should have done is created the half circles with the pen tool to start with. Brilliant. Thanks for solving my weird dilemma.

[lacerto]

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