Mind the technical writers: Multiple strokes not yet available, use vector brush as workaround?

[Rainer]

Dear Affinity Designer developers,

 

as a technical writer over the past 25 years I have used illustration software to provide images with multiple stroke lines: thin black line with a dot at the end on top of a wider white line with a larger dot at the end (see attached file sample.tiff).

 

This way the line and particularly its end are always easily visible, no matter what the image in the background looks like.

 

With CorelDraw I never figured out how to select a node of the black line in the foreground and the node of the white line right behind it together, so creating this effect was always a pain, particularly when changes had to be applied.

 

So once I started to work with AI I found the multiple stroke feature to be a real blessing (licensing and update policy not quite so).

 

When I open an EPS from AI in AD, the white line, the black line, the white dot, and the black dot are all individual objects. Well, I expected that...

 

I see that "Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape" is on the AD roadmap. Parametric "arrow tips", too?

 

Adding these features would open a market of thousands of technical writers who yearn to replace AI.

 

When will we see these features in AD?

 

In the meantime: "brushes" seem to be very powerful (the rope, #196, is really cool!), much more than needed for the above mentioned effect.

 

Can brushes be "abused" to create the multiple stroke line incl. the dot ends as a temporary workaround? What would I have to do to achieve that? (I don't find an instruction on how to create my own brushes).

 

Regards

Rainer

[VIPStephan]

This tutorial could be useful for you:

 
P. S.: Apparently you forgot to attach the promised TIFF.

[edit]

That’s strange – is the video showing up for anyone? All I see is a big empty space; I thought it could by my NoScript/Ghostery/AdBlock plugin setup but deactivating those doesn’t fix it. Anyway, the link I meant to post is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd_OZ-7vm8k

[/edit]

[Rainer]

Hi VIPStephan,

 

I had selected the file, but did not notice the "Attach this File" button (sorry, this was my first post on this forum). Now the file should show up.

 

I don't see a video, just a dozen+ of blank lines.

 

Best regards

Rainer

sample.tiff

[VIPStephan]

Rainer, I edited my previous post and added a link. If you also don’t see a huge empty space instead of a video then it appears something with the automatic YouTube embedding is wrong in this forum.

[VIPStephan]

Oh, and besides creating a custom brush with a round tip you can add an outline effect to any shape to simulate the double stroke:

• Draw your line (e. g. with the pen tool)
• Click on the “fx” button at the bottom of the layers panel
• Click “outline” and check the checkbox
• Select the color and radius of the outline