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Designer: How to fix boolean addition on "holed" shapes


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This shape on a single curves layer has two endpoints:

grafik.png.7618685d9e9d9dbe695777a3dfb9f14f.png

If I try to add (boolean operation (Geometry > Add or Merge Curves)) another shape to this one sometimes the curves inside disappear:

grafik.png.70a14b2329d06dd876e3cffab00ec550.png

How to stop that or how to get rid of multiple endpoints (Because this only happens if a shape has multiple)?

This does not always happen, it happens more often on larger documents, when I try to combine multiple curves layers to one single together. This is really annoying and I don't know how to prevent that from happening.
I can force that to happen if I select only this curves layer and press Add.

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Hi Nox!

To add/subtract/Intersect... two shapes they should not have end points. You have to close the curves by selecting their start and end points with the Node Tool and then click "Close Curve" in the section "Action" of the context bar of the node tool.

In this special case you have to subtract to get a hole in the bigger shape. It is also important that the shape you want to subtract lies on top.

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How to subtract shapes wasn't really my question...

My workflow since years: I have 2 shapes:
grafik.png.4a53835977782b3e8145af50be1b8456.png

I select both and use Subtract.

The outcome is a holed shape:
grafik.png.c9ed8d49eab1609398c6f9882cc827ee.png

If I now add some shapes to that, (sometimes (on larger documents or multiple shapes) the inner path will get removed (I can force it by pressing Add):
grafik.png.7dec1b6bdaa2142a21c35bc2597f541e.png

I don't want the inner path to disappear and I think my workflow is correct, with different vector programs (inkscape, illustrator) I never encountered this issue so far.

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I copied two of the shapes into a new document:
grafik.png.1269b00248c7195d2277eacad2e8df71.png

If I now try to combine them them to one curves layer, this happens:
grafik.png.acf533a5a9e923d7f151ce19aa38c7d8.png

grafik.png.7cc072899e0253cdcae5ef488d1ceff8.png
I'm also not able to subtract anything from the second shape.

Sample File: holed-shape-sample.zip

PS: I figured multiple end nodes isn't the reason and shapes having multiple is very normal, so I edited my posts a bit.

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Oh I see, the N was on Winding.

But I have another letter (R), which is also holed and is not getting filled with the Winding fill mode (which it is on by default), if I switch to Alternate it stays the same.
I think I don't quite understand how these modes work.

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2 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I'm not sure, but possibly the font designer drawed the curves in different directions. If you draw a "R" or another character with a hole, it doesn't matter in which direction you draw the curves.

It’s standard practice for the main outline of a glyph to be drawn clockwise but for the counters (‘holes’) in the glyph to be drawn in the opposite direction.

4 minutes ago, BofG said:

With the node tool (I think), on the context toolbar there is a button to reverse the path.

That would be my first port of call in a case like this.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

It’s standard practice for the main outline of a glyph to be drawn clockwise but for the counters (‘holes’) in the glyph to be drawn in the opposite direction.

Ok this is really helpful, now I understand how this works. I took a look back into the document, checked "Show Orientation" and immediately saw what's wrong, thank you so much!

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13 hours ago, Alfred said:

It’s standard practice for the main outline of a glyph to be drawn clockwise but for the counters (‘holes’) in the glyph to be drawn in the opposite direction.

That might be state of the art (I'm not that familiar to creating fonts), but the problem is that there are many people out there that create fonts (just downloading Fontforge or another free Font Editor and give it a try), also not really being familiar to the professional standards. Because of that there are so many really bad fonts on the market.

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