Selecting an object from two that aren't technically "Grouped"

[DFX Darrell]

Hello, I'm new to Affinity Designer moving over from Illustrator. I'm trying to do something as simple as selecting one object outline from two that aren't technically "Grouped". They exist together as one. The Move Tool selects both with a bounding box around them as does the Node Tool which also selects both. I want to separate these object outlines and can't seem to do it. I saw an Affinity Help article that said you can select one by double clicking with the Node Tool but that doesn't work either. It does the same and selects both. I also tried selecting all the nodes individually from one of the object outlines and tried to copy and paste but it still pastes both. I want to either select one and copy and paste it or paste both and delete one.

 

Please see the screen shots for reference. The first one shows the bounding box around both objects using the Move Tool and the Layer Menu drop down shows "Group". But it's already together as one! Very frustrating!

 

Thanks for your help in this seemingly simple task.

 

Darrell Friedrich

[firstdefence]

Select the object/curve and use the boolean option: Divide.

[GarryP]

In your screenshots we can see that you have a Curves Layer selected, and a Curves Layer contains more than one Curve.

You can normally use menu “Layer → Geometry → Separate Curves” to convert a Curves Layer to many Curve Layers.

However, I notice that your Curves Layer has at least one child layer (it has an arrow icon to the left of the thumbnail) so performing any function on it may not do everything which is expected.

Can you show us what the child layers of that Curves Layer are?

[PixelPest]

If you want to move/alter parts from compound paths select 1 node with the node tool then (on Mac) hit cmd+A to select all continuous nodes at once - then transform or whatever you want:

[Old Bruce]

Please expand this layer and see if the other curves layer is inside it.