Feature Request: Designer — Bake/Expand Dashes

[ronnyb]

It would be VERY beneficial to be able to BAKE Dashed Strokes, not as can currently be done via Expand Stroke, but via a new command that leaves the lines as a true single stroke line (no outlined path), but simply leaves dashes and removes the gaps from the original stroke.

Thanks for your consideration.

[GarryP]

It might help you to get more people interested in this is you can explain why it would be “VERY beneficial” to have it.

[walt.farrell]

Can you explain what you mean by having a single-stroke dashed line that doesn't have the gaps? Without gaps,  wouldn't it be solid instead of dashed?

And, like Garry, I wonder why that's beneficial.

[GarryP]

How I understood the request was that the single dashed Curve layer would be converted to a Curves layer containing multiple individual curves, each of which was part of – and the same shape as – the original curve ‘arc’ where the dash is drawn.

Something like that in my attached image but with the red curves as multiple curves in a Curves layer.

I have no idea how this could be helpful, but I’ve never needed to do it.

(Maybe I've not interpreted the request properly though.)

[ronnyb]

@GarryP @walt.farrell I can assign any dashed line style to my illustrations, but when I go to plot them, the svg generates a solid path, without the dashes. So in order to use in CNC applications, I use a plotter, I need that dashed style to be baked and replacing the original path upon export to svg. Imagine trying to cut up all these dashed lines manually…
 

[walt.farrell]

So you're wanting them to be individual dash segments, so they will be cut as dashes, but they're coming out as solid lines now?

And the CNC also can't handle expanded strokes?

[ronnyb]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

So you're wanting them to be individual dash segments, so they will be cut as dashes, but they're coming out as solid lines now?

And the CNC also can't handle expanded strokes?

Yes, individual paths for each dash segment... Expanded Stroke will create an outline shape based on the stroke's thickness. I want to maintain the integrity of the original path, and only cut out the gaps from the dash style...

[GarryP]

Thanks for the explanation; that makes it much easier to understand why you might want such functionality.

[v_kyr]

16 hours ago, ronnyb said:

I can assign any dashed line style to my illustrations, but when I go to plot them, the svg generates a solid path, without the dashes. So in order to use in CNC applications, I use a plotter, I need that dashed style to be baked and replacing the original path upon export to svg.

Then that's more a shortcumming of your Plotter software and how it handles, imports/parses SVG code here, as the Affinity SVG generator usually creates a "stroke-dasharray" for dashed lines in SVG.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 800 600" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:space="preserve" xmlns:serif="http://www.serif.com/" style="fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:1.5;">
    <path d="M88.533,94.67C124.67,86.577 196.944,70.389 237.195,72.938C270.445,75.043 300.341,94.854 330.037,109.96C365.373,127.935 444.506,150.961 449.21,180.788C453.914,210.616 347.481,246.489 358.26,288.925C369.039,331.361 465.603,400.723 513.885,435.405" style="fill:none;stroke:black;stroke-width:3px;stroke-dasharray:9,12,0,0;"/>
</svg>

 

[ronnyb]

7 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Then that's more a shortcumming of your Plotter software and how it handles, imports/parses SVG code here, as the Affinity SVG generator usually creates a "stroke-dasharray" for dashed lines in SVG.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 800 600" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:space="preserve" xmlns:serif="http://www.serif.com/" style="fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:1.5;">
    <path d="M88.533,94.67C124.67,86.577 196.944,70.389 237.195,72.938C270.445,75.043 300.341,94.854 330.037,109.96C365.373,127.935 444.506,150.961 449.21,180.788C453.914,210.616 347.481,246.489 358.26,288.925C369.039,331.361 465.603,400.723 513.885,435.405" style="fill:none;stroke:black;stroke-width:3px;stroke-dasharray:9,12,0,0;"/>
</svg>

 

Yea CNC software doesn’t care about styling, it cares about start and end of paths. As such, these coding/style attributes are useless, just like fills for shapes, hence my original post asking for a way to bake in the path’s dashes into discreet curves/paths/objects… 👍 😂 

[v_kyr]

45 minutes ago, ronnyb said:

asking for a way to bake in the path’s dashes into discreet curves/paths/objects

Depending on the drawings you use, you can use some suitable third-party tracer/vectorizer in order to transform those into plain vector curves/paths.

Or in ADe possibly ...

• convert dashed lines or shapes (with no fill) into a curve layer
• then expand stroke so you get a curves layer
• and finally geom. divide the resulting curves layer

[ronnyb]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Depending on the drawings you use, you can use some suitable third-party tracer/vectorizer in order to transform those into plain vector curves/paths.

Or in ADe possibly ...

• convert dashed lines or shapes (with no fill) into a curve layer
• then expand stroke so you get a curves layer
• and finally geom. divide the resulting curves layer

None of that gives suitable results. This should be a simple BAKE button, just like interactive Shapes get BAKED into regular paths/curves. 

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, ronnyb said:

just like interactive Shapes get BAKED into regular paths/curves. 

They don't all, try with rects + ellipses, convert them to paths/curves and export them as SVG, afterwards inspect the SVG code inside some editor.

[ronnyb]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

They don't all, try with rects + ellipses, convert them to paths/curves and export them as SVG, afterwards inspect the SVG code inside some editor.

I don't want an outline, i want a single stroke dash. I don't want to edit 10,000 dashes by hand, lol... BAKE DASHES, discreet paths, rendered EXACTLY like they are in Hairline View.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, ronnyb said:

I don't want an outline, i want a single stroke dash. I don't want to edit 10,000 dashes by hand, lol... BAKE DASHES, discreet paths, rendered EXACTLY like they are in Hairline View.

You don't seem either way to understand what I was going to tell you. Also what I said before above via vectorizing as a workaround works (no outlines and skeletized) if you use center-line tracing.

[ronnyb]

On 10/4/2023 at 5:53 AM, v_kyr said:

Then that's more a shortcumming of your Plotter software and how it handles, imports/parses SVG code here, as the Affinity SVG generator usually creates a "stroke-dasharray" …

I passed your comments on to the plotter devs, he’s added direct support for that, hopefully soon. Also learned that inkscape, which runs my plotter software as an extension, has a Convert to Dashes extension, so I can address it there…

I still think Designer should have this as a one button, Bake Dashes command…

 

[2ddpainter]

@ronnyb

Such an option has been available in “Vectorstyler”
since the new version 1.2 Beta

You find the command at
Menu > Object > Shape > Convert to Dashes
(There may be a small arrow at the bottom of the object menu,
the command will then be below this arrow)

 

[v_kyr]

9 hours ago, ronnyb said:

Also learned that inkscape, which runs my plotter software as an extension, has a Convert to Dashes extension, so I can address it there…

Yes, beside that, Inkscape also has & offers the above mentioned center-line tracing/vectorization capabilities.

9 hours ago, ronnyb said:

I still think Designer should have this as a one button, Bake Dashes command…

For people who have to prepare their vector drawings for output on plotters, cutting machines and the like, it might be a valuable feature to have. Then no other third-party workarounds are anymore needed.

[ronnyb]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Yes, beside that, Inkscape also has & offers the above mentioned center-line tracing/vectorization capabilities.

14 hours ago, ronnyb said:

Are you saying Inkscape’s extension can center-line trace/vectorize an illustration which is already in vectors?

[v_kyr]

22 minutes ago, ronnyb said:

Are you saying Inkscape’s extension can center-line trace/vectorize an illustration which is already in vectors?

No (...never tried that vector-to-vector tracing so far with Inkscape), as tracing/vectorization is usually performed/done with/on pixel/raster images, so if you have some bitmap image and want to vectorize that one. Thus such tools are more commonly named as bitmap-to-vector tracers.

For example I made above shown dash line in ADe and saved that as an JPG/PNG image, afterwards feeded that resulting image through SuperVectorizer which also supports center-line tracing (...as Inkscape does), in order to get single line vectors (and no outlines) out of these line dashes. - With common tracers here (aka those without any centerline-tracing support) you would only get vector outlines as a result out of these initially in ADe created dashes. Aka something (vector outlines) you don't want to have here in order to send it directly to a plotter.