[AD 1.8.3] What is this path disappearing thing???

[MmmMaarten]

When trying to solve/understand another issue with joining curves I just bump into another thing in Designer;

When I move the nodes of path A over nodes of path B and hold my pointer still, suddenly the moved path disappears. When moving again, it's back again, but when releasing the mouse on this invisible state it's gone forever.

It looks like this is some feature I don't know about, as the cursor changes when this happens and shows some kind of 'copy'-icon. But I never seen this before. Is this disappearing path thing really intentional? What is it for?

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

When I move the nodes of path A over nodes of path B and hold my pointer still, suddenly the moved path disappears. When moving again, it's back again, but when releasing the mouse on this invisible state it's gone forever.

It isn't disappearing nor is it gone forever. Note that at the end of your video the Layers panel still shows that there are two curves. What is happening is the selected & moved nodes are being copied to those of the nodes of the other curve.

Because at that point all the nodes of the moved curve are still selected, you could drag on any one of them with the Node tool & the entire curve could be moved away from the one it is now a duplicate of.

The History panel names this step as "Move and Copy handles." Searching the forum on that phrase finds only one topic that mentions that by name, in this post by @PixelPest. Two posts above that is mine, which includes another video using this 'move & copy' feature with different curves from yours.

I still don't know if this feature has any name other than what is shown in the history, & I cannot find any mention of it in Designer's help, or in any of the official Designer video tutorials that demonstrate its use.

[lepr]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I cannot find any mention of it in Designer's help

 

It is mentioned in the appropriate section named "Edit vector curves and shapes".

The instruction fails to state that multiple nodes can be selected and affected if they are contiguous, and it doesn't have an illustration of the helpfully changed appearance of the Node Tool pointer which informs the user that they should pause and wait for a couple of seconds.

 

[MmmMaarten]

@anon2  @R C-R Thanks guys for your answers. That looks interesting.

I did some tests here and see the curve nodes are getting the same positions as the target curve. And that is the target curve has 20 nodes, but the dragged node only 10, only those 10 nodes get the shape of the target curve. So in that case it's not the same as just duplicating the target curve.

But what's a use case for this? When would we like to use this over just duplicating a curve? Just curious

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, wigglepixel said:

But what's a use case for this? When would we like to use this over just duplicating a curve? Just curious

One use is when I have two curves & want to make just a few adjacent nodes of one curve the same as those of a nearby one, so part but not all of their paths are precisely aligned.

[MmmMaarten]

If I would give it a name: I would call it 'stamp curve' 😀 

Have to let it sink in when this is really useful.

Just tried to create something useful with this feature, like trying to create this line drawing from objects:

...but it seems only the nodes on the target shape are left and the rest get truncated. And it only works on a single curve, not all curves in a 'curves' layer unfortunately. That would have been great!

Got close with little testing on open curves though, but there was some unexpected result (for me) when the curve left the 'stamp'-curve:

We can create silhouettes of character-curves though:

 

I'm sure there are other creative uses for this. Anybody else knows some real world use cases for this? Would be nice to share some! 😀

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, wigglepixel said:

Anybody else knows some real world use cases for this?

Admittedly this quick & dirty example is a bit contrived but hopefully you can see real world uses for it. Say I want to create a can or bottle with a lid or stopper & I have gotten as far as the two shapes on the left. By dragging the two selected blue nodes (that currently have no handles) on the top shape over either the #1 or #2 node on the lower shape, they can be converted to two nodes with handles such that the curvature of the segment between them exactly matches the curvature of the top edge of the shape below it, resulting in the two shapes on the right.

I can then move the lid or stopper shape somewhere else on the canvas, confident that its lower edge is still a perfect 'fit.'

[MmmMaarten]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

they can be converted to two nodes with handles such that the curvature of the segment between them exactly matches the curvature of the top edge of the shape below it,

That's actually a very nice use case indeed.

Did just some quick testing. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but can't get it to work here so far. The icon appears to indicate I want to 'stamp curve', but doesn't do a thing. But I didn't really invest time into it yet. Maybe I don't meet the right criteria or have a wrong order in nodes or something else is wrong.

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but can't get it to work here so far.

I think the only thing you might be doing wrong is not waiting long enough for the move & copy to occur. At least on my old iMac, it takes 3 or 4 seconds after the pointer badge changes to the double-rectangle (or whatever it is) indicator for it to work. I don't know if there is some setting somewhere that affects that, or if maybe it just takes longer when it has to sort through a lot of snapping options, or what.

[MmmMaarten]

51 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think the only thing you might be doing wrong is not waiting long enough for the move & copy to occur. 

Look at the video: the icon next to the cursor clearly indicate I've waited long enough and it's in the 'stamp mode'. So I'd say either it doesn't work the way you think it should as by your example, or I am doing something wrong.

[Old Bruce]

5 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

just some quick testing. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but can't get it to work here so far. The icon appears to indicate I want to 'stamp curve', but doesn't do a thing. But I didn't really invest time into it yet. Maybe I don't meet the right criteria or have a wrong order in nodes or something else is wrong.

I too just did some quick testing and I think the problem is that you have the Align Handles.... thing turned on. When I turned that off the snapping occurred after a slow 5 count.

[MmmMaarten]

10 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I too just did some quick testing and I think the problem is that you have the Align Handles.... thing turned on. When I turned that off the snapping occurred after a slow 5 count.

Ah, Nice!! I forgot about those snapping and alignment functions up there. That did the trick indeed!  Thanks! 😀

 

[MmmMaarten]

Alright! Now with the handles-alignment turned off my initial plan to make line drawings with shapes doés work as I was hoping! 😀

Pretty great feature this 'stamp curve' thing! 😚

@Old Bruce @R C-R @anon2

[R C-R]

31 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I too just did some quick testing and I think the problem is that you have the Align Handles.... thing turned on. When I turned that off the snapping occurred after a slow 5 count.

That might explain the length of the delay I was seeing. When I started testing this I had every snapping function disabled, just to see if it would work, & maybe a bit surprisingly it did. That sort of makes sense -- a longer delay when one does not want other snapping functions to interfere with normal node placement makes it harder for the copy & move feature to be triggered accidentally.

53 minutes ago, wigglepixel said:

Look at the video: the icon next to the cursor clearly indicate I've waited long enough and it's in the 'stamp mode'.

I probably wasn't clear enough about this. The delay time begins when the first cursor badge appears & the copy & move isn't activated until the second one does, so (without other snapping options enabled) you would have to wait several seconds longer than you did in your video.

[lepr]

6 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

Alright! Now with the handles-alignment turned off my initial plan to make line drawings with shapes doés work as I was hoping! 😀

Pretty great feature this 'stamp curve' thing! 😚

@Old Bruce @R C-R @anon2

 

 

For me, the state of the "align handles" snap has no influence on this "copy from another node" feature. The copying always happens after a 1.5 to 2 seconds pause on my machine. That's constant even with thousands of nodes made visible and every snapping option enabled except for "snap to gaps and sizes".

[MmmMaarten]

3 hours ago, anon2 said:

For me, the state of the "align handles" snap has no influence on this "copy from another node" feature. 

 

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

The delay time begins when the first cursor badge appears & the copy & move isn't activated until the second one does, so (without other snapping options enabled) you would have to wait several seconds longer than you did in your video.

Yes, I understand when this feature starts working and I've seen it working several times now as you can see in the videos above. But in some cases it's obviously not working without turning off alignment of handles.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

But in some cases it's obviously not working without turning off alignment of handles.

Just so I am clear about it, which alignment option do you mean? If it is the "Align handle positions using snapping options" one (with the  icon), that enables whichever of the 'global' snapping options are currently in effect in addition to whichever of the Node Tool's four other snapping options shown in the context toolbar are enabled.

That means there is a lot of different snapping combinations to consider! 

Anyway, while I have not tested every one of them, even with every possible snapping option enabled, this feature still works for me, so I have no clue why it is not for you.

[lepr]

6 hours ago, wigglepixel said:

But in some cases it's obviously not working without turning off alignment of handles.

Could you provide a file where the "align handle positions using snapping options" needs to be disabled, please?