Can't cut into curve in [Designer v1]

[vitaprimo]

I can't substract (again!).

I'm attempting to cut the little hole on the P. To get the shape, I duplicated the P and deleted all the surrounding nodes to reverse the filling, leaving the D-shaped curve to cut into the P. To be safe, I drew a big enough random curve, intersected the little D into the random curve to make a brand new D curve that had nothing to do with the original shape, and tried to cut that into the P…

 

That's just one of the way I attempted to go about it but nothing I do seems to fix it. Boolen operations are really messed up at times, sometimes crossing a curve over various areas of another curve and adding it, fixes it, but not always.

What do the red dots mean again? If curves are open, how come the cam add up and group without deforming horribly and when cutting they create more shapes in that are both part of the result but still they can deleted without leaving trace they existed? Like the little D-shaped curve.

[v_kyr]

See:

So also check for closed curve paths first. And also after a boolean/-geometric subtract then the winding type setup, aka "Layer -> Fill Mode -> Alternate (Even-Odd)" and "Layer -> Fill Mode -> Winding (Non-Zero)", which influences the showup!

[vitaprimo]

Thanks for answering, I learned something new today at the very least.

——

Yeah, I knew something like that, that red nodes were bad news. But, AFAIK an open curve doesn't fill correctly and it's immediately noticeable in the stroke. The shapes behave like close curves until booleans are used. I tried the "new" menu item but it changed nothing. And I use the old share and added the thickest inner stroke possible to fill it completely, then expanded the stroke, which would again leave me with a brand new curve, right!? It came out with a lot of red nodes again. A new curve. Is there a setting that draws al new curve broken or something?

The worst thing is that, say I make peace with having to close every curve, but I can't because the close curve button continues unavailable after selecting the nodes.

 

I think I should start beginning to learn Inkscape soon. I had to move to Linux at some point anyway, I just thought I'd had a little more time left on macOS + Affinity Designer.

Thanks again.

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, vitaprimo said:

...I think I should start beginning to learn Inkscape soon. I had to move to Linux at some point anyway, I just thought I'd had a little more time left on macOS + Affinity Designer.

It's usually pretty easy to do, I show you here quickly how to subtract that P and and the inner part (that D shape), which I made out of a rotated segment shape converted to curves, in a little screencast.

Instead of the Segment shape tool you can of course alo use the Pie shape tool to create that inner "D" part, just convert that then to curves"

[vitaprimo]

Hi, thanks again.

That is what I'm doing. Except for the shapes which now I've drawn by hand with the pen tool. On the very last attempt it finally worked, but I now have to redraw the whole thing. And, I still get the red nodes even though the curves are closed, and stroke and fill are correct.

P redrawn, I added the arrow in the stroke to see where it ends/begins:

Like so:

Corner tool, all normal:

Selection of both curve before punching it: Two red nodes:

Punched it. And notice there's one arrow, meaning it's a single closed curve, yet there are two red nodes again/still.

 

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It turns out I didn't need to redraw the whole thing, luckily, but I still have a ton of red nodes and "open" curves in a single object:

And if I select winding fill mode (I'm still not sure what's that supposed to do, later…) it, the P…:

I mean, I'm starting to Stockholm Syndrome-myself into that P, but y'know…

___________________

I do really appreciate your help though. I think this might be a document-related setting because I just draw something else in a new document and curves closed correctly with no red nodes. I check on it later, I don't want to do it stressed because this is my fun app, I don't want to ruin it.

Thanks a million.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, vitaprimo said:

It turns out I didn't need to redraw the whole thing, luckily, but I still have a ton of red nodes and "open" curves in a single object:

You always have one start/end red node for a closed path among the line segments, which is pretty normal & Ok there.

Don't know if you already looked over several of the Online help docu parts (?), which in turn do explain certain things (though shortly) about drawing vector curves/shapes etc. It also deals with node types ... etc. - You may want also to take a look over several of the help files, which do cover the aspects you are using here.

• Drawing curves and shapes
  • About lines, curves and shapes
  • Draw curves and shapes
  • Edit vector curves and shapes
  • Drawing pencil lines
  • About geometric shapes
  • Draw and edit shapes
  • Selecting and aligning nodes
  • Transforming curves and shapes
  • Using multiple strokes and fills
  • Expand stroke
  • Contouring curves and shapes
  • Cornering shapes
  • Fill modes
  • Node Tool

1 hour ago, vitaprimo said:

And if I select winding fill mode (I'm still not sure what's that supposed to do

The two vector algorithmic winding rules are better explained at Wikipedia, see therefor ...

• Even-Odd rule
• Nonzero-rule