Cutting a cross shape in a circle with Affinity Designer

[CyberAngel]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Not sure what I am looking at here, but the lines are not capped and its destructive.

[v_kyr]

6 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

Not sure what I am looking at here, but the lines are not capped and its destructive.

How can a simple circle shape be destructive if you always can alter it again and again? Further you can alter the line settings (cap, join, align) accordingly too!

[CyberAngel]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

How can simple circle shape be destructive if you always can alter it again and again?

Yeah I was not seeing what you had done, after playing with it, its not going to work. If I resize the circle, I have to adjust those values again.

[v_kyr]

Just now, CyberAngel said:

Yeah I was not seeing what you had done, after playing with it, its not going to work. If I resize the circle, I have to adjust those values again.

Size it first then play with the settings until they meet your needs here! - Other than that define & setup the whole in/as SVG code and import that then into Affinity, it will be vector curves then.

[CyberAngel]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

Size it first then play with the settings until they meet your needs here! - Other than that define & setup the whole in/as SVG code and import that then into Affinity, it will be vector curves then.

Not a solution I am prepared to have. It takes too long to work out those values.

[v_kyr]

23 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

Not a solution I am prepared to have. It takes too long to work out those values.

Then use the curves approach, either draw a stroked circle and substract a cross (or whatever shape) to get a gapped circle and remove the unwanted outline nodes. - Or draw the whole instead from arc line segments.

[CyberAngel]

25 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Then use the curves approach, either draw a stroked circle and substract a cross (or whatever shape) to get a gapped circle and remove the unwanted outline nodes. - Or draw the whole instead from arc line segments.

That becomes destructive

[v_kyr]

32 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

That becomes destructive

There is usually no other way, since you can't do it in a non-destructive way for shapes other than combining/grouping several shape parts as one compound/grouped object then.

[JimmyJack]

How about using a donut as a symbol? 
(remember that a donut with 100% hole radius is a double line, which I personally find irksome. But if you're not sending it to some laser cutter....)

 

[prophet]

1 minute ago, JimmyJack said:

How about using a donut as a symbol? 

I was just thinking about trying tat. This is the winner!

[CyberAngel]

13 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Simply open the file in Designer, then you are able to change the caps, too. Why do you think it is destructive? You can adjust any parameter later.

Well I don't understand why there are 4 versions of the donut, secondly there is no cross to modify. What if I want to replace the circle with a square or even a hexagon? Or even change the cross to another shape other than a cross?

[v_kyr]

36 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

Well I don't understand why there are 4 versions of the donut, secondly there is no cross to modify.

There are 4 versions of the donut, since it's used to create 4 single corresponding arc segments which are combined together to create the wanted gaped circle object. There is no cross since that's not needed here then at all to get the wanted shape based result.

Further doing a geometrical subtract on any shape with a cross etc. would always yield to a curve-object, which you didn't wanted since you think it's destructive then. The later means, that you can't keep a shape to remain to be a resulting shape by/when performing geometrical operations on that, since the result will be always a curves object.

 

 

 

[CyberAngel]

4 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

There are 4 versions of the donut, since it's used to create 4 single corresponding arc segments which are combined together to create the wanted gaped circle object. There is no cross since that's not needed here then at all to get the wanted shape based result.

Further doing a geometrical subtract on any shape with a cross etc. would always yield to a curve-object, which you didn't wanted since you think it's destructive then. The later means, that you can't keep a shape to remain to be a resulting shape by/when performing geometrical operations on that, since the result will be always a curves object.

 

 

 

Yet still not what I was hoping for, as for generating curves or a curve-object. I was able to create this with no Curve-Objects, and while I got the hang of it, this is still not an ideal workflow. And like I said, I can not just simply replace the circle with a square or hexagon even.

 

 

[v_kyr]

30 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

I was able to create this with no Curve-Objects, and while I got the hang of it, this is still not an ideal workflow.

Which doesn't meet your previously above shown sample with changable/settable end caps for the line segments and the like. And so AFAI understood it, wasn't what you wanted (?).

33 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

And like I said, I can not just simply replace the circle with a square or hexagon even.

Depends on how you've set it up at all here. - From just that screenshot portion it's not viewable what sort of layer components (shapes, curves, etc.) have been used and how they've been arranged to get there so far. Meaning, you can instead attach one of your example files which comes closer to what you're after then.

All in all you may want to better express & define what the overall workflow is you're after here, so people here in the forum can probably better tell you then if it's possible to accomplish that in some plain shape way or not.

[CyberAngel]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Which doesn't meet your previously above shown sample with changable/settable end caps for the line segments and the like. And so AFAI understood it, wasn't what you wanted (?).

Not entirely, but there is no other way. Sadly, the workflow is horrendous. 

 

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Depends on how you've set it up at all here. - From just that screenshot portion it's not viewable what sort of layer components (shapes, curves, etc.) have been used and how they've been arranged to get there so far. Meaning, you can instead attach one of your example files which comes closer to what you're after then.

All in all you may want to better express & define what the overall workflow is you're after here, so people here in the forum can probably better tell you then if it's possible to accomplish that in some plain shape way or not.

Its all shapes, two circles and two crosses. I can make changes and resize, change the colors and do everything that I need (almost) more so than most other suggestions.

Actually the out circle is based on the other suggestion of a cog (not sure the shape name), while it creates a circle and allows me to do this, it still locked to a circle. Meaning I can not just replace it with any other shape. Meaning a bad workflow.

[GarryP]

You have given us two different examples of what you want to create, the first with rounded ends on the four curves, the second with sharp ends on the outer curves and some other stuff inside.

If you cannot give us a definitive example of what you want to create then you may find yourself ‘going round in circles’ as different people try to help you with different things and everyone is working at cross-purposes.

Showing us exactly what you want do, but not done the way you want to do it since that’s the point of the question, gives us much more of a chance to help you get what you want.

[v_kyr]

35 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

... Meaning I can not just replace it with any other shape. Meaning a bad workflow.

It's overall difficult to keep everything as editable shapes here. - For example ...

... the above shown keeps the base shape (circle, rect, trapezoid ...) and cross shape exchangable, but then has other sideeffects like ...

• it's line style is caps wise not visually adaptable
• as the cross is layer erased here, the whole doesn't usually export without rasterization

 

[CyberAngel]

4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

You have given us two different examples of what you want to create, the first with rounded ends on the four curves, the second with sharp ends on the outer curves and some other stuff inside.

If you cannot give us a definitive example of what you want to create then you may find yourself ‘going round in circles’ as different people try to help you with different things and everyone is working at cross-purposes.

Showing us exactly what you want do, but not done the way you want to do it since that’s the point of the question, gives us much more of a chance to help you get what you want.

I actually did, what I have ended up with is because of the limitations in the program. My original question is what I was after, what I have now is a mixture of things based on suggestions!

[CyberAngel]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

It's overall difficult to keep everything as editable shapes here. - For example ...

... the above shown keeps the base shape (circle, rect, trapezoid ...) and cross shape exchangable, but then has other sideeffects like ...

• it's line style is caps wise not visually adaptable
• as the cross is layer erased here, the whole doesn't usually export without rasterization

 

Yeah this is what I am finding, and I feel its a lot of work when all you want to do is drop two shapes and subtract them. While there is a work around as you have shown, I am finding it a horrendous work flow, compared to other applications. I know this is still young as an Application, hopefully it get easier.

[GarryP]

17 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

My original question is what I was after

I see, then if your first example (with the rounded caps) was what you want then the workflow given by Jimmy Jack two posts after that should work – i.e. a Donut and two rectangles in a non-destructive compound – which you accepted would suffice.

You were then given another example by NotMyFault which had rounded caps but you said that it wasn’t good enough because you wanted to change the caps.

You later gave an example with non-rounded caps but didn’t say what was wrong with it, caps-wise.

This is part of my confusion as to what you want.

[prophet]

24 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

I am finding it a horrendous work flow, compared to other applications

Let us know what other application can get the result you want. Maybe someone here will have experience with that app and Affinity and be able to point us in the right direction.