Are Designer's XOR and Merge Curves meant to be different?

[Otto Manuel]

Hi, I was trying to learn about Designer Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves and can not figure out how it differs from the XOR function.

Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/ObjectControl/join.html

They may look similar or identical if you don't consider Fills.

[Otto Manuel]

Hi,

 The link does not seem to make any mention of the Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves function.

 FWIW, consideration of the fills is one of the points that made me ask the question.

 Here is a simple Designer file made for a test:

 This is the result of selecting all the curves and running a XOR function:

 This is the result of selecting all the curves and running a Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves function.

 The placement of the nodes, which are effectively hidden, is markedly different in the two examples, but the shapes and fills seem remarkably similar, so I find it difficult to discern a difference.

 Hence the question.

 What am I missing?

 

[lepr]

1 hour ago, Otto Manuel said:

What am I missing?

XOR actually changes the geometry. Regions where an even number of source shapes overlap are actually removed.

Merge Curves just collects the paths into one object, and the appearance of overlapping regions being present or absent is dependent on the object's fill mode - alternate versus winding.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Otto Manuel said:

The link does not seem to make any mention of the Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves function.

The link only provides information about boolean operations. Information on organizing the curves is given here.

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/CurvesShapes/draw_linesAndShapes.html

Both operations can produce visually similar results in some cases, but serve completely different purposes:

[Otto Manuel]

Thanks for the tip about the Fill Mode and its affect on Layer > Geometry > Merge Layers