Expand Stroke bugs

[ticalion]

Hi, I have noticed plenty of issues with weird-looking strokes in Affinity Designer (Big Sur, M1 Mac). They usually going mad after selecting Expand Stroke. Here's an example.

[Sean P]

Hi ticalion,

Would you be able to attach a copy of the document shown in your screenshots please? I've tried creating a similar object but that is expanding ok for me.

[ticalion]

Sure. I've attached the file with only those two objects that behave strangely after expanding stroke. I'm on M1 Mac Mini Big Sur and the latest version of Designer.

expand_stroke_bug.afdesign

[loukash]

On 3/17/2021 at 8:23 PM, ticalion said:

only those two objects that behave strangely after expanding stroke

You have extra nodes on the path that are causing this. You must zoom in like… 25,000,000 % (!) to see them:

 

You may need to clean up the nodes by some means to fix that.

Edited February 25, 2024 by loukash
replaced *.mov with *.mp4

[Dazmondo77]

Ideally, we'll get an intelligent simplify path option in a future release 

[loukash]

Just now, Dazmondo77 said:

we'll get an intelligent simplify path option in a future release

Yeah. And the hope is that it will happen during our remaining lifespan… (If "77" is your year of birth, you have a slightly better chance than I do )

By the way, I just couldn't let go yet and was toying with the example file since the last 20 minutes again. Even after cleaning up the nodes and converting to outline, the outline again creates random redundand nodes that are a mere few µm distance.

It is a bug, and it seems to me that it always boils down to those ever faulty boolean operations.

@Sean P, please, tell the devs that fixing boolean operations must become the absolute top priority. This is maddening. thanks

[ticalion]

Thanks for pointing that. I think I've made corners like that using the corner tool or the other new corner tool. Can't recall which one now since it was some time ago. I never zoomed more than 2500% to realize that there is more than one node.

[loukash]

On 3/18/2021 at 2:29 PM, ticalion said:

I think I've made corners like that using the corner tool or the other new corner tool.

In fact, for this kind of simple shape you'd need no more than two nodes:

  Edited February 25, 2024 by loukash
replaced *.mov with *.mp4

[Alfred]

33 minutes ago, loukash said:

In fact, for this kind of simple shape you'd need no more than two nodes:

In fact, for that particular shape you don’t even need to use the Pen Tool. You can use the Crescent Tool instead.

[loukash]

33 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You can use the Crescent Tool instead.

Why not, if that's the exact curve you're after.
Blue: crescent
Red: 2-node curve

[Nuno Andrade]

I'm a new Affinity designer user.

I'm in this very instant trying to solve a similar issue.

On Illustrator, to prevent this from happening, I first turn it into a compound path and only then I'd expand or punch out from another object. That seemed to work really well on complex shapes, but I'm still struggling to solve this here -  the solutions above are not ok because you might want to use lots of points for a complex shape.

 

[Nuno Andrade]

To be more clear...

[Jonopen]

On 3/18/2021 at 9:38 AM, loukash said:

@Sean P, please, tell the devs that fixing boolean operations must become the absolute top priority. This is maddening. thanks

+1

Not to be a grump about it, but my last post about boolean operations (still unresolved) was November 2020, but problems were first reported September 2014 (also still unresolved). Image below showing a multitude of extraneous curves after using divide, just to make the point, again!

[LAdrian]

Expand Stroke bug,

Affinity Designer Version 1.10.5
System macOS 11.6.5

Simple packaging diecut, stroke 11pt to expand background for bleeds,
Expand stroke and here it is a bug. Instead of simple bezier curves there is a lot of mess.

But I investigated the issue and everything is fine when the curve is clean without any additional points.
This is the result of double points in the same place, mess in the curves.

Make sure that your curves are always clean and tidy.