path from text bug with boolean operations: workaround to convert correct shapes for further use

[4dimage]

Hi,

there are some heavy bugs concerning compound pathes created from text (text to curves) that affect standard boolean operations as well as the new shape builder. Affinity seems to have recognized all the different posts concerning these bugs and is working on it.

Meanwhile i tried different workarounds to get shapes from artistic text in Affinity itself that can be used with boolean operations properly. Unfortunately didn't find any appropriate conversion workaround that maintained the original shape.

 

But i found this workaround - until Serif fix these bugs

I had installed Inkscape already - sometimes use this for preparing SVG drawings for web programming.

Inkscape is a free, open source vector drawing software: https://inkscape.org/

 

Now the trick:

1) Important: in your Affinity app prefs set clipboard -> copy elements as SVG !!!

2) Create artistic text in e.g. Affinity Designer. Convert text to curves. Copy curves to clipboard.

3) Open Inkscape with a new empty document. Paste clipboard to Inkscape document. The shape now apears unchanged in the Inkscape document workplane. Copy shape from Inkscape back to clipboard.

 

4) Paste clipboard to Affinity Designer. Now you have a group in your layers panel containing the shape that was pasted into the document. Drag the relevant vectors out of the group. Now you have the visualy same shape back in Designer. But the internal path description seems somwhere to have changed during this cliboard copy/paste action.

The pasted shape from Inkscape can now be used with boolean operations (e.g. subtract rectangle, cogweel or cat from compound letter shapes).

 

Here is a little recipe:

boolean-operations-path-from-text-workaround_1-2.afdesign

 

By the way: Inkscape is an open source project. The software is free.

Anyway, you may decide to make some donation to this project - they deserve it.

I donated 50 EUR last week (not kidding!) because Inkscape manages to export a simple DIN A4 document (210 x 297 mm) to PDF with exact 210,00 x 297,00 mm document size. Without any hassle! Affinity has still (old v1 problem, now in v2 still the same) rounding bugs when exporting to PDF.

e.g. look this

 

[saraartist]

Thank you! I was thinking about using canva to create my text and then export as an svg as well.

[maxen]

Great! Thanks for this idea!