Edward Goodwin Posted October 20, 2020 Share Posted October 20, 2020 Hi, Please could someone explain how to join coincident points in Designer? I understand how to use the Join tool with non-coincident points: shift-select the two end points with the node tool, select Join and hey presto! you get a new line which joins the two selected points. However, what about if I don't want a new line? How do I select the two coincident points such that they then join to create a single point which joins the two lines together? In Illustrator, this is not tricky - click and drag over the two coincident points > select join (decide if you want a sharp corner or a curving corner) and it's done. I'm sure I'm missing something in Designer... could someone spill the beans please? Thank you! Edward mrshifty 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfriedberg Posted October 20, 2020 Share Posted October 20, 2020 You're not alone. Please see You can also try dragging one point (with the Node Tool) over the second point until the yellow snapping cue appears superimposed over the curve belonging to the second point. (Assuming you have the appropriate snapping options turned on.) I find that too fussy to be practical for more than one or two joins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward Goodwin Posted October 21, 2020 Author Share Posted October 21, 2020 Hi Sfiedberg, thanks for the reply - good to know that it's not just me! When you suggest dragging one point over the second - do you mean after you've already joined two points? If yes, then you still have a line between those two points (even if at that point they are coincident and hence that line has zero length). Then, when you drag the point you'll probably just pick up one point and the extra line will re-appear. I hope this is something that Affinity is working on. Do you know how I can propose it as a feature request? Edward Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatGuy Posted October 21, 2020 Share Posted October 21, 2020 You can use the alignment options with selected nodes, not exactly a one-click solution either but at least you don't need to zoom in or be overly precise. If you're doing a lot of this you can bind align centre/middle to your keyboard and have it all a bit more streamlined. 2020-10-21 17-21-21.mp4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward Goodwin Posted October 21, 2020 Author Share Posted October 21, 2020 That is an interesting solution... It's interesting that in this situation, the third (unnecessary) joining line is not created... But, as you say, it's not exactly a 1 click operation. Thanks for the feedback though. I hope someone from Affinity is watching and might create a solution the problem properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward Goodwin Posted June 21, 2021 Author Share Posted June 21, 2021 Any news on this feature? I find myself needing to join coincident nodes repeatedly. Indeed, I was looking for a solution again and found my own comment above about it. Any news? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrshifty Posted August 11, 2021 Share Posted August 11, 2021 I can't believe this is a request that's been around since 2018 at least. This is a major function that seems to have been omitted. Its a bit of a deal breaker for me too. Looks like I may need to go back to AI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindsay Wilson Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 Bump bump? 🤗 I recently started using designer, primarily because the ability to do variable-width strokes is exactly what I wanted for woodcut-like effects. However I was amazed to see that it can't do something as simple as joining endpoints, something that every other piece of vector software has no issue with. Any update on this at all? Big thanks to @thatGuy for the suggestion using alignment, that'll save the day for now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 Welcome to the forums @Lindsay Wilson Coincident end points of two curves in the same Curves layer can be joined by using the Join Curves function of the Node Tool – see attached video. You can use the same functionality to join two non-coincident end points of a Curves layer but the result may be a bit strange depending on how the software calculates the join. The same functionality works on two different Curve (without the ‘s’) layers. If none of this is what you want then would you be able to explain exactly what you want to happen? 2022-01-08 12-53-06.mp4 Lindsay Wilson 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophet Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 I too found this frustrating when I first started using Designer, but I got a new workflow pretty quickly. As others have noted, on a single curve, one can Close Curve to have the app create a curve between points, and one can drag a node onto another to get the yellow indicated which will weld the 2 nodes together. For separate curves, I've found that to be able to drag select 2 overlapping nodes to weld, as the OP is trying to do, one has to make sure both curves are selected first. I find the easiest way to do that is to do a quick toggle to the Move Tool (v), drag around the node junction to select both curves, then quick toggle to Node Tool (A) and drag again to select the nodes, then Join Curves. An aside that has been bemoaned for quite some time on these forums, Join Curves work better than Close Curve as you can see in the last steps of the video. Close creates an extra line whereas Join does not. Screen Recording 2022-01-08 at 10.19.56 AM.mov Lindsay Wilson 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindsay Wilson Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 @GarryP and @prophet - both of your suggestions work perfectly! I don't know why I was unable to get this to work properly when I was trying it yesterday. I've tried various situations of curves in the same layer, different layers, and it works every time. Only thing, is there any way to set a keyboard shortcut for the Join Curves action itself? (A) will select the node tool, but is it possible to get a shortcut for a particular action? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophet Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 1 hour ago, Lindsay Wilson said: is it possible to get a shortcut for a particular action? Certainly. Go to Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts > Node Tool > Join Curve Lindsay Wilson 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindsay Wilson Posted January 9, 2022 Share Posted January 9, 2022 🤦♂️ And so it is! Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophet Posted January 9, 2022 Share Posted January 9, 2022 Happy to help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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