Designer b-splines and arc tool

[Greyfox]

Nice as Affinity Designer is, after years of working with DrawPlus, I'm finding it hard to make the change to the newer Affinity product.
Today a simple task, to change an old bitmap logo to a vector based one.  Right from the outset, I couldn't find a b-spline tool . Spent some time on line searching, and it seems some of the coding for it has been in the product for a few years, but it has never been activated. Each year people have asked about when a b-spline tool would be available, but as far as I can see,  there has never been a positive commitment. So here in 2021, I'll ask the question again "when can we expect a b-spline tool?"

I spent some time with the pen tool smart mode, but the amount of re-work necessary to get decent curves was just way too daunting.

Next issue, I couldn't find an arc tool.  What I needed was a simple quadrant.  Was able to produce one by drawing a circle, then subtracting two rectangles to cut off the unwanted bits. Surely there must be a less clunky way?

In the end it was taking too much time so I took the easy way out and went back and did the job in DrawPlus X8.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, Greyfox said:

Next issue, I couldn't find an arc tool.  What I needed was a simple quadrant.  Was able to produce one by drawing a circle, then subtracting two rectangles to cut off the unwanted bits. Surely there must be a less clunky way?

A closed quadrant can be achieved quite easily with the Pie Tool but an open one requires several steps:

1. Draw a circle

2. Convert to curves

3. Choose the Node Tool

4. Marquee-select two adjacent nodes

5. Break curve

6. Delete the unwanted curve

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Pie Tool but an open one requires several steps

Hole radius == 100% looks like an open one.

[Alfred]

42 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Hole radius == 100% looks like an open one.

That ‘looks like’ is the crucial detail here. Although it looks correct visually, the curve doubles back on itself, and this may make it unsuitable for some use cases.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Alfred
Corrected typo

[Greyfox]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

A closed quadrant can be achieved quite easily with the Pie Tool but an open one requires several steps:

1. Draw a circle

2. Convert to curves

3. Choose the Node Tool

4. Marquee-select two adjacent nodes

5. Break curve

6. Delete the unwanted curve

Thanks Alfred, I was aware of the node method to obtain an open arc of quadrant, but it was actually a closed quadrant I needed and your suggestion of using the Pie Tool works for me. 😀

[Joachim_L]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

That ‘looks like’ is the crucial detail here. Although it looks correct visually, the curve doubles back on itself, and this may it unsuitable for some use cases.

then another method:

1. Create pie with hole radius = 0%.

2. Convert to curves.

3. Delete the superfluos lines with Node tool holding the Ctrl key.

[Greyfox]

3 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

then another method:

1. Create pie with hole radius = 0%.

2. Convert to curves.

3. Delete the superfluous lines with Node tool holding the Ctrl key.

Yes that works too, thanks for the suggestion. 😀