How do I add an extra line on the outside, 10mm from the first line

[Royk]

Hey peeps, i am scratching my head hard. And so far lost a lot of time in Affinity Designer (Again)

 

I have an illustraiton that needs to be printed on a huge sticker. The printer needs a cuttingline, so i use Designer for this. After drawing a basic line on the outsides of the drawing, i need to add 10mm extra, and use that for cutting. But i cant get it done. For example, i go for a 20mm thick stroke in the middle, and expand this. Than i want to delete the inside line, but the program refuse this and delete both lines. This was in Illustrator 2 minutes work. I am sure this can be done in 2 minutes to in Designer. Right?

To solve my problem and continue the day with a 30 minute loss i went for deleting all the inside nodes by hand. 

 

So, how to expand a line with a new line outside, on distance X, and make it work that i can delete the inside from this all?

[GarryP]

When you expand a stroke you get a Curves layer (notice the “s” at the end) which contains more than one curve.

If you want to remove one of these curves you can use menu “Layer → Geometry → Separate Curves” to get separate Curve (notice there’s no “s” at the end) layers, one or more of which can be deleted. (The separated Curve layers will have the same Fill, so further modification may be necessary.)

Another option is to duplicate the original layer and use the Contour Tool, but that doesn’t always work particularly well on some geometries.

[Royk]

8 minutes ago, GarryP said:

When you expand a stroke you get a Curves layer (notice the “s” at the end) which contains more than one curve.

If you want to remove one of these curves you can use menu “Layer → Geometry → Separate Curves” to get separate Curve (notice there’s no “s” at the end) layers, one or more of which can be deleted. (The separated Curve layers will have the same Fill, so further modification may be necessary.)

Another option is to duplicate the original layer and use the Contour Tool, but that doesn’t always work particularly well on some geometries.

Thanks Garry, this is the whole way to go. Thank you very much! 2 minutes work

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

One other possible technique could be to:
1. Expand the stroke;
2. Separate the Curves;
3. Geometry Subtract.
...but I don’t know how well that will work in all circumstances; worth giving it a try though.

There could be other (better?) ways to do this so keep watching for any further advice.

[thomaso]

This thread discusses various workflows for the creation of a cut contour: "How do I apply a contour to a shape that consists of a contour"
(you can use a browser plug-in for direct translation)