How to make part of a group of vectors transparent?

[JWLD91]

Hey, I'm trying to cut holes in a group of vectors - the squares that you can see on the attached image. I'd like those squares to be transparent so that you can see through to whatever is behind the image itself.

 

I've fiddled around with compounds but can't seem to get it to work that way.

 

Is this possible at all? 

[MEB]

Hi JWLD91,

One way to do this without resorting to boolean operations is to place both rectangles inside the Cabin_Exterior group (on top) and set their Blend mode to Erase. Since this will also make the black strokes transparent you may want to duplicate the rectangles first and use the original without strokes with the Blend set to Erase to create the hole, and the duplicate with stroke set to black and no fill with Blend mode set to normal just to keep the strokes.

 

It's also possible to create the same effect with boolean operations, but without seeing how you have structured the Cabin_Exterior group (or the file itself) is difficult to offer an useful solution.

You probably have to duplicate the rectangles to subtract them from each object that compose the Cabin_Exterior group.

[JWLD91]

Aha that works perfectly thank you.

 

And thanks for the quick response, Affinity Designer's support is top of the line!

[MEB]

You're welcome  ^_^

Just one note, If later you need to export the file as vectors it's better to use boolean operations for this. Setting the Blend mode to erase will rasterise the layers/objects.