Knife tool not working for certain elements

[Joshua Stamper]

Greetings, All,

As the subject line suggests, I can cut through certain elements of my design with the knife tool, but not others. The items are selected first, per the instructions in the manual, but to no avail.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Joshua Stamper

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, Joshua Stamper said:

I can cut through certain elements of my design with the knife tool, but not others.

What are the "elements" you cannot cut with the knife?

[Joshua Stamper]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

What are the "elements" you cannot cut with the knife?

Thanks. The non-cuttable elements are lines.

[Joshua Stamper]

File attached. I can't cut through the staff lines or bar lines.

Kahn - Order Is - Vln I - 7 Layers.afdesign

[Old Bruce]

You have to almost hover the knife over the line to see it turn into a Scissor icon, then click. No Click and Drag operation with Open Curves, AKA Lines.

[Joshua Stamper]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

You have to almost hover the knife over the line to see it turn into a Scissor icon, then click. No Click and Drag operation with Open Curves, AKA Lines.

Thanks. I've tried using the scissor tool, which creates a node, but it doesn't seem to have actually separated the lines. When I go to the move tool, it doesn't let me grab either end of what should now be two different lines. It still selects one uncut line.

Regarding your note about the lack of click and drag with open curves, I can cut through the green line just fine with click and drag. Does that not count as an open curve?

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Joshua Stamper said:

When I go to the move tool, it doesn't let me grab either end of what should now be two different lines. It still selects one uncut line.

Ah, my fault. I didn't explain that we wind up with a Curves layer. Go to Layers > Geometry > Separate Curves to ... well separate the curves layer into two (or three or nine) separate curve layers. There is the Toolbar icon which is not part of the default set that you can add. To add/subtract items from the Toolbar right click on it and choose Customize Toolbar from the contextual menu.

[Joshua Stamper]

Ah! I see! That helps. Thank you.

Couple more questions:
- Is there a way to make the scissor cuts the same across multiple lines be the same at the same X or Y axis-point? When I need to make a cut on a music staff, there's slight variation with where I place the scissor tool, which ends up eating time later to line things up. The advantage of the knife's click and drag function is that, when shift is engaged, it makes a perfectly straight cut, which saves lots of time and clean up.

- Are there ways to make selections at more granular levels? One of the things I'm trying to select are the ledger lines (the tiny lines that noteheads sit on or intersect for lines that go above or below a normal staff. Apologies if you're already in the know about music notation). Every time I try to select one, it only selects the notehead, or the staff, or other nearby elements. I've tried messing around with the different options on the select menu, but haven't been successful.

Thank you so much for all your help. After hours of banging my head against the wall, this is a welcome relief.

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, Joshua Stamper said:

When I need to make a cut on a music staff, there's slight variation with where I place the scissor tool,

I would place a Guide where you want the "cut" to occur. Then I would use the node tool to add a node, which is easy if you have Snap to Guides turned on in the Snapping. Then I would use the Break Curve after selecting that node.

Music PDFs are a right royal pain to edit.

[Joshua Stamper]

51 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I would place a Guide where you want the "cut" to occur. Then I would use the node tool to add a node, which is easy if you have Snap to Guides turned on in the Snapping. Then I would use the Break Curve after selecting that node.

Music PDFs are a right royal pain to edit.

Ah - so disregard the knife tool altogether?

Helpful.

You've done work with music PDFs? Would love to talk more!

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Joshua Stamper said:

You've done work with music PDFs?

Yes I have. No I don't anymore, too much hassle. It is like trying to unscramble an egg. Madness lies that way.

I just (re)arrange the music in the MIDI application and produce a new PDF of just the part I want. 

[Joshua Stamper]

3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Yes I have. No I don't anymore, too much hassle. It is like trying to unscramble an egg. Madness lies that way.

I just (re)arrange the music in the MIDI application and produce a new PDF of just the part I want. 

Yes - I do everything I can in my notation program, but with anything that requires non-traditional notation, I have to pull it in to a design program. It's tedious work, that's for sure!

[lepr]

2 hours ago, Joshua Stamper said:

File attached. I can't cut through the staff lines or bar lines.

Knife Tool refuses to slice through straight lines which have a fill (which won't be visible in the case of a straight line, of course).

Your problematic lines have a redundant grey fill in addition to the grey stroke. Set their fill to none and then you'll have no trouble slicing through them.

[Joshua Stamper]

21 minutes ago, ,,, said:

Knife Tool refuses to slice through straight lines which have a fill (which won't be visible in the case of a straight line, of course).

Your problematic lines have a redundant grey fill in addition to the grey stroke. Set their fill to none and then you'll have no trouble slicing through them.

Absolutely amazing. THANK YOU!!

[Joshua Stamper]

1 hour ago, ,,, said:

Knife Tool refuses to slice through straight lines which have a fill (which won't be visible in the case of a straight line, of course).

Your problematic lines have a redundant grey fill in addition to the grey stroke. Set their fill to none and then you'll have no trouble slicing through them.

Also, wondering if you might have any insights on an earlier question above about more granular selection of items:

"Are there ways to make selections at more granular levels? One of the things I'm trying to select are the ledger lines (the tiny lines that noteheads sit on or intersect for lines that go above or below a normal staff. Apologies if you're already in the know about music notation). Every time I try to select one, it only selects the notehead, or the staff, or other nearby elements. I've tried messing around with the different options on the select menu, but haven't been successful."

Thank you in advance!

[lepr]

13 minutes ago, Joshua Stamper said:

Every time I try to select [a ledger line], it only selects the notehead, or the staff, or other nearby elements.

I'm able to marquee select a ledger line. If you tell us what you intend to do with them, there may be advice to help you succeed efficiently. (Although I'm switching off until tomorrow now )

[Joshua Stamper]

55 minutes ago, ,,, said:

I'm able to marquee select a ledger line. If you tell us what you intend to do with them, there may be advice to help you succeed efficiently. (Although I'm switching off until tomorrow now )

Thanks so much. I'm needing to select the ledger lines and change their color at various points. Definitely interested in efficient success. Let me know your thoughts when you're able, and thank you!

 

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

You have to almost hover the knife over the line to see it turn into a Scissor icon, then click. No Click and Drag operation with Open Curves, AKA Lines.

Maybe I misunderstood what you mean but with the exception mentioned above by @,,, I can drag through open curves with the Knife Tool to cut them into multiple curves in AD V2.0.4.

[lepr]

15 hours ago, Joshua Stamper said:

I'm needing to select the ledger lines and change their color at various points.

Your ledger lines all appear to be black, so you can select them on that basis and put them into a Layer to make them easy to access by disabling Edit All Layers:

• select any one ledger line
• do Select > Select Same > Stroke Colour
• press cmd+G to group
• do Layer > Promote Group To Layer
• use button at bottom left corner of Layers panel to disable Edit All Layers

There will be a few black vertical lines in addition to the ledger lines in the Layer, but you can move them out of the Layer.

You'll find the document much easier to work with if you give it a structure with various Layers for the various features of the notation.

 

[Joshua Stamper]

4 hours ago, ,,, said:

Your ledger lines all appear to be black, so you can select them on that basis and put them into a Layer to make them easy to access by disabling Edit All Layers:

• select any one ledger line
• do Select > Select Same > Stroke Colour
• press cmd+G to group
• do Layer > Promote Group To Layer
• use button at bottom left corner of Layers panel to disable Edit All Layers

There will be a few black vertical lines in addition to the ledger lines in the Layer, but you can move them out of the Layer.

You'll find the document much easier to work with if you give it a structure with various Layers for the various features of the notation.

 

This is an exciting response — it's pointing a big arrow at the solution. Thank you.

If I can ask a question that is I'm sure very basic: what is 'promote group to layer' and why is it useful? If you've already grouped a set of layers, you can apply whatever modifications necessary for just that group, yes? Sorry in advance. I am a newbie.

[lepr]

21 minutes ago, Joshua Stamper said:

what is 'promote group to layer' and why is it useful? If you've already grouped a set of layers, you can apply whatever modifications necessary for just that group, yes?

I didn't know that you wanted to change all ledger lines to just one particular colour. The Layer instead of Group, in combination with disabling Edit All Layers, makes it easy to prevent other objects on the page from interfering with ad hoc selections of only some of the ledger lines.

 

[Joshua Stamper]

8 minutes ago, ,,, said:

I didn't know that you wanted to change all ledger lines to just one particular colour. The Layer instead of Group, in combination with disabling Edit All Layers, makes it easy to prevent other objects on the page from interfering with ad hoc selections of only some of the ledger lines.

 

I think that makes sense. Thank you thank you!

[madebywitteveen]

Hi you all,

loving V2 so far but can't find a function.

There is this YT video with someone showing how to cut a line within the KNIFE tool and after that doing some magic keyboard commands and remove the section in between two nodes.

Unfortunately this example is from MAC! 

How to do this in WIN ? can't find it ?!

thanks

 

 

 

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, madebywitteveen said:

There is this YT video with someone showing how to cut a line within the KNIFE tool and after that doing some magic keyboard commands and remove the section in between two nodes.

Unfortunately this example is from MAC!

It doesn't really have anything to do with the Knife Tool. It is a Node Tool option that on Macs can be used by holding down the CTRL modifier key while clicking on a curve segment.

Unfortunately, I'm a Mac user & do not know if there is an equivalent for the Windows version of AD 2.

[Old Bruce]

24 minutes ago, madebywitteveen said:

Unfortunately this example is from MAC! 

How to do this in WIN ? can't find it ?!

On the Mac we have four modifier keys; Shift, Control, Option(the equivalent is Alt on Windows) and Command. The above is done by holding down the Control Key on the Mac. Obviously this won't work for Windows.