Affinity Designer: Cut Out Parts of Graphics that Fall Outside a Border

[andren]

I drew a rectangular border on the canvas. Some of the vector graphics fall partially outside of that border. I want to cut out (or make invisible) the parts that fall outside the border.

The shapes consist of both closed shapes and open shapes (lines). The shapes are outlines (without a fill).

I'd like to know if there's a way to cut out, or make invisible, the parts outside the border, and do it in a way that won't automatically close off the shapes. I want the shapes to still remain the same, except I want to remove the messy parts that fall outside the border.

Take a look at the image I have attached to see an example of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Thank you

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, andren said:

I'd like to know if there's a way to cut out, or make invisible, the parts outside the border, and do it in a way that won't automatically close off the shapes. I want the shapes to still remain the same, except I want to remove the messy parts that fall outside the border.

Easiest way is to just group and then clip the shapes with a Rectangle. You will still have the outside bits but ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary to cut them off.

Converting all to individual curves and adding nodes where the border is and then trimming off the excess is one way of doing this. But that is far from easy.

[thomaso]

... and possibly steps of your other thread works here, too.

[andren]

On 7/25/2022 at 3:42 PM, Old Bruce said:

Easiest way is to just group and then clip the shapes with a Rectangle. You will still have the outside bits but ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary to cut them off.

Converting all to individual curves and adding nodes where the border is and then trimming off the excess is one way of doing this. But that is far from easy.

Thank you for the idea! I will try drawing a rectangle shape with a fill behind the border and clipping the shapes to that rectangle, so that they won't be visible outside the border.

[andren]

On 7/25/2022 at 8:46 PM, thomaso said:

... and possibly steps of your other thread works here, too.

I thought of doing that earlier but I got confused because in that thread I was using a square that had a fill, but here I only had the outline of a rectangle without a fill. I didn't know how to clip the shapes to the outline, so that they would only be visible inside the rectangle without being visible outside the rectangle. I guess the workaround to this would be to create a rectangle with a fill behind the border outline and clip the shapes to that rectangle. It should work in most cases, except for when I want to have a transparent background.

[thomaso]

13 minutes ago, andren said:

I thought of doing that earlier but I got confused because in that thread I was using a square that had a fill, but here I only had the outline of a rectangle without a fill.

What makes you think a fill would be required? (And why not a little trial & error when you already had the idea?)

[andren]

On 7/31/2022 at 2:36 PM, thomaso said:

What makes you think a fill would be required? (And why not a little trial & error when you already had the idea?)

Thank you very much for pointing that out!

I was trying to figure this out earlier but I didn't notice that it was possible to get this effect by making the individual shapes into child layers of the rectangle.