How to fill a shape built with shape builder

[AGain]

Hi I try to explain better my question:

1. I draw using a combination of overalpping basic shapes (circles, squares etc...) in order to use the 'shape builder' tool later and create a new resulting shape by deleting unwanted lines or areas for the overlaps. so far so good.

2. once done this and obtained the resulting new shape, I usually have a number of layers, all together making up the new shape, each one made usually of unclosed shapes

3. The I usually group them using group command

At this point what I would like to do is filling the new shape with a color but this action I do at group level does not work because AD2 first closes and fills all the unclosed shapes resulting in the end in something that often is not right.

I tried to use instead of group, the combine tool  or the sets functions (union, difference...) but it does not change the result and it does not work.

The only way I found and it works but it's really time consuming and I don't like is by selecting all the layers making up the new shape and then manually connecting with the anchor tools and options those points of the different sub-shapes in order to connect them by hand. In this way I have a new shape which is a closed shape because I closed/combined manually all of the subsegments/subparts that were open.

What I was looking for is a sort of MERGE of the sub shapes into the new shape so that when filled becomes uniformly filled and I can avoid to connect the nodes manually.

Other SWs I used in the past just do just that.

Is there a way with AD2 to achieve this ?

If it's not clear let me know and I will share an example.

many thanks

andrea

[NotMyFault]

Hmm if you use it correctly, the shape builder actually creates closed curves from surrounding open curves.

1. just select all relevant open curves
2. activate shape builder
3. mark area
4. a new closed curve will be created, using the required edges of that area

 

[lepr]

2 hours ago, AGain said:

If it's not clear let me know and I will share an example.

Best to post an example Affinity Designer document to ensure there is no ambiguity.

[AGain]

I have to thank 'notmyfault' from hamburg because now I understood how I had to do it.

Maybe this can be usefull to others as well.

So if you work with the shape builder tool and...

1. you use the [-] minus action on top and delete single pieces of lines (placing the cursor ON the segment, it becomes red) from an overlapping set of different shapes

2. IF at the end of this process you end up with a hollow shape apparently closed but actually (check picture below attached and your layers) made of open sub-shapes THEN...if you fill it and you see it doesn't work as you thought try point 3.

3. you select again all the layers, select the Shape Builder tool, but this time in the options you select the [+] plus (which is: 'Create a new shape from selected areas and remove used areas from original objects')  and click in the area WITHIN the shape (blue diagonals area). It seems this action does nothing but actually it converts the layers into a single merged layer ! 

I attach my story for this to those who maybe run into the same issue

Andrea (from Milano)

[firstdefence]

Changes nothing? it does something my friend... What, in all likelihood it does is, joins the curves and then closes the curves loop, thus making it a single object. You can see if this is the case by looking at the layers panel and seeing if you now have a curve or curves layer instead of a group of individual layers.

[AGain]

@firstdefence that's why 😉 I said "apparently"