Auto weld nodes option

[tmvideo]

Please add auto-weld (auto-join) option for curve editing.
It will be extremely useful for workflow.

1) Auto-weld automatically when drag one node on another
2) Auto-weld button with specified distance between nodes (example: select all nodes of curve, press auto-weld by distance).

Also please fix: nodes handles are changing their direction when two nodes join together.

 

[bdrex]

On 5/3/2020 at 5:48 AM, tmvideo said:

2) Auto-weld button with specified distance between nodes (example: select all nodes of curve, press auto-weld by distance).

+1, Yes please, this would save an incredible amount of time when cleaning up vector graphics generated by CAD programs.

I often need to create technical illustrations from DXF & PDF; they rarely have clean paths, but any editor with a simple threshold-value auto-join operation makes this easy.

[JET_Affinity]

For clarity, I certainly hope no one is asking for this to be a default behavior.

I do not want an endNode of a path to auto-join to another path just because I drag it to within pick distance of another path's end. There are countless situations in illustration in which one draws coincident paths that should not be joined. Look no further than paths of different weights, color, or other style attributes that nonetheless need to have coincident ends. What about when more than two endNodes are coincident? How is the program supposed to know which path I would want it to auto-join to?

The auto-joining behavior of Adobe Illustrator's Pen, for example, is one of its most infuriatingly intrusive stumbling blocks. To avoid its infernal insistence on auto-joining to other deselected paths when drawing, you actually have to invoke this ridiculous override:

1. Mousedown somewhere that you don't want the next node to be
2. Press and hold the spacebar
3. Drag to where you do want it the node to be
4. Mouseup
5. Release the spacebar

A path drawing tool is not a selection tool, and should not act like one. It has no business affecting unselected paths just because you need to place a node within pick distance of another path's endnode. Nor should it occur when just dragging an endNode.

At most, any such behavior should have to be invoked by a keyboard shortcut. It should not be default behavior.

The  task of cleaning up DXF files is an oft-cited use case, and one with which I am quite familiar, having been doing technical illustration since well before personal computers. But it's still a specifically vertical use case; nothing that should be cited to justify a default behavior. Other programs accommodate it with separate, explicitly-invoked menu commands. You select the paths you want to be affected and then invoke the joining command (with whatever parameters offered in a dialog). If that's what you're recommending, I'm fine with it. But auto-joining as default behavior is bad.

JET

[sfriedberg]

See also

 

[loukash]

On 2/2/2021 at 2:01 PM, JET_Affinity said:

auto-joining as default behavior is bad.

This!

[Jowday]

On 5/3/2020 at 2:48 PM, tmvideo said:

Please add auto-weld (auto-join) option for curve editing.
It will be extremely useful for workflow.

1) Auto-weld automatically when drag one node on another
2) Auto-weld button with specified distance between nodes (example: select all nodes of curve, press auto-weld by distance).

Also please fix: nodes handles are changing their direction when two nodes join together.