What's the difference between »Divide« and »Separate Curves«?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey folks,

I'm just wondering what' the difference between the two options in the Layer → Geometry menu.
At first glance they both seem to have the same function – maybe someone can enlighten me? 💡

Cheers and … wash your hands
MrDoodlezz 😄

[GarryP]

As far as a know, Divide separates the curves into intersecting areas where they overlap, while Separate extracts each part of a (maybe merged) curve into its own curve ignoring any overlap. This might be a bit of an over-simplistic way of looking at it but it works for me.
My attached video might help.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey Garry,

thanks for the explanation of the boolean operations.
But that's not exactly what I meant, I'm familiar how they work.
I was talking about the drop down menu under Layer resp. Geometry. 😉
So it's rather what's done with the new shape after the usual boolean operations.

I don't see any difference between these two options in the way they work, yet here they are …

[GarryP]

I think what we are seeing in your video is because you have already Xor’d the shapes.
In this case the two functions do the same thing because there is no overlap, but they do different things when there is an overlap (as shown in my video).
Or am I still misunderstanding the issue?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Oh, now that I'm thinking about it I got it – you're absolutely right!
Yeah, now these two options make sense.

Guess I was a little blind sided today … 😵