Thick stroke convert to outlines results in wonky chopped edges

[dantaylr]

I'm working on this custom typeface title which uses an extremely thick stroke. I have some small slanted corners in there. When I try and convert it to outlines it looks like a palm leaf on the edges. 
 

I don't know of a workaround.
 

I have attached a working file to test. 

Test.afdesign

[Ldina]

@dantaylr I don't see a way to solve that either. Perhaps someone else does. I played with different stroke properties, miters, etc, but they all bombed when expanding the stroke. There are two possible workarounds I can think of (perhaps other, better ones exist)...

1. When you expand the stroke, it creates a lot of extra Nodes, which you can see when you select the expanded stroke with the Node tool. In the letter "S" in the attached screenshot, I removed the extra nodes in the upper left corner. It's those extra nodes in the beveled angles that seem to be causing your Palm Tree effect. 

2. The other approach is to create your letters, as you have already done and use them as a template. On a new layer, use the Pen Tool to create a path, which you can fill with your desired color. Then delete your original fattened stroke. 

With either approach, once you have each letter completed, you can save them as Assets, in a resource file, and recycle them as needed. 

There may be better methods I haven't thought of. 

 

[NotMyFault]

It seems V1 handles this better than V2.

[NotMyFault]

The problem seems to be caused by overlapping nodes (before expand stroke). E.g. the letter S. Use the node tool and drag the nodes out of positions, some are duplicate and covering each other.

If you create the letters from scratch without duplicates, expand stroke works correctly.

[Ldina]

@NotMyFault Good catch! I didn't zoom in close enough and didn't see those extra Nodes before expanding. 👍

[dantaylr]

47 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

The problem seems to be caused by overlapping nodes (before expand stroke). E.g. the letter S. Use the node tool and drag the nodes out of positions, some are duplicate and covering each other.

If you create the letters from scratch without duplicates, expand stroke works correctly.

I need those two nodes that are close together to create the angled edge. They're not fully overlapping. Otherwise the edges of the stroke would be sharp. 

[dantaylr]

1 minute ago, dantaylr said:

I need those two nodes that are close together to create the angled edge. They're not fully overlapping. Otherwise the edges of the stroke would be sharp. 

Oh! However your comment made me wonder if it's a scale issue. I scaled up my text and line thickness to the point where the line thickness is the maximum (100pt). When I expanded the stroke it worked!

So the real bug is that when you expand a stroke at a small size, some points may be merged into each other causing unintended side effects. 

[Ldina]

@dantaylr 

1 hour ago, dantaylr said:

I need those two nodes that are close together to create the angled edge.

I don't think you do need those extra Nodes. I was able to create those angles by setting the "Join" value in the Stroke Panel to a bevel per the attached screenshot. Try this for the beveled edges, and if necessary, adjust the miter value.

 I also wondered about the scale being so small. Glad that worked for you, but the above may also work and be a simpler, more elegant solution (assuming the angles and sizes work for you). 

[lepr]

10 hours ago, dantaylr said:

So the real bug is that when you expand a stroke at a small size, some points may be merged into each other causing unintended side effects. 

Yes, an old Affinity problem. If I remember correctly, good stroke expansion in Affinity requires the distance between nodes to be a minimum of 0.5 document pixels. (Affinity's internal unit of measure is pixel.) You can either temporarily scale up the object in order to do the expansion, or you can temporarily increase the document pixel density (termed DPI in the document properties) in order to do the expansion.

[lepr]

8 hours ago, Ldina said:

I don't think you do need those extra Nodes. I was able to create those angles by setting the "Join" value in the Stroke Panel to a bevel per the attached screenshot. Try this for the beveled edges, and if necessary, adjust the miter value.

 

The paired nodes are necessary for providing control of the size of the bevel at a given corner.

[NathanC]

Hi @dantaylr,

I've logged your file with the developers for further investigation. 👍