'Calculations Failed' 'Shape Builder Failed' When using Vector Flood Fill or Shape Builder

[LukeMcConkey]

Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a lovely day.

I'm just trying to get a little more information on these error messages I'm consistently getting when using Affinity Designer 2.60 on my 16 inch MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 64GB Memory, MacOS Sequoia 15.3.2.

It seems to be when my illustrations get to a point where there are a fair few curves in the document it starts showing these errors and I can't use the tools. I am not sure if this is an issue with selecting too many curves/nodes and the software simply can't work with all the calculations to fill with colour or make a shape etc. 

Has anyone else had this issue? Is there anything I can do to stop this from happening? 

Any suggestions welcome! 

Cheers,

Luke

[GarryP]

Without being able to examine the document it looks like you could simply have selected too many layers.

Have you tried selecting fewer layers before using either tool?

Is there a point where <this> amount of layers is okay but <that> amount of layers is not?

Is there a specific layer which, when selected, always causes the problem no matter what else is selected?

There have been some problems in this area that have been reported – you can search the forums for calculations failed to find some of them – but without more specific information we can only guess at what the problem might be.

[LukeMcConkey]

42 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Without being able to examine the document it looks like you could simply have selected too many layers.

Have you tried selecting fewer layers before using either tool?

Is there a point where <this> amount of layers is okay but <that> amount of layers is not?

Is there a specific layer which, when selected, always causes the problem no matter what else is selected?

There have been some problems in this area that have been reported – you can search the forums for calculations failed to find some of them – but without more specific information we can only guess at what the problem might be.

Cheers Gary, is there a limit to how many layers you can select when using these tools? 

By layers does this also include separate curves with in a layer, e.g. one layer could have 100 separate curves? 

I tend to have all my outlines on one layer, then colour fills on a layer below that. Obviously within those layers there are lots of curves/shapes. 

Cheers,
Luke

[GarryP]

I don’t know if there is a limit to the number of layers, or the number of curves in those layers, or the number of nodes in those curves, or some combination of the those, or something else. (I'm guessing that there might be but I don't know.)

What I do know is that it’s often useful to diagnose a problem by limiting the ‘variables’ that could be part of the problem, which is why I suggested that you try selecting different amounts of layers to see if you could narrow down the possibilities for the cause of the problem.

The amount of information available to me at the moment is insufficient for any kind of realistic problem diagnosis.

As hinted at above, without being able to examine the document, the best I can do is guess that the problem could be related to one of the problems that have already been reported.

Note: Full-screen (whole application UI) screenshots are often more informative than limited-area screen-grabs. The more information we have, the more we have to work with, and the better we can (usually) help.

[LukeMcConkey]

Hi Gary,

Yes, when I select fewer layers/curves/nodes it works. It seems to be an issue of too many all at once. I've just tried incrementally selecting all the layers and when I got to the end it was working so I went back and selected everything at once and it failed again. 

I've attached the document for you to have a look at but to caveat this is happening on all my documents not just isolated to this one. This file is for a live client project if we could keep it within this forum that would be great!

I totally appreciate it's hard to pin these things down. 

Cheers for your help,

Luke

[EDIT] File removed as it was posted on a public forum but was intended to remain private.
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[Lee D]

@LukeMcConkey If you can DM me a copy of one of the files where you’re seeing the message, I’ll take a closer look. I may also forward it to our development team as a sample for further investigation and to help identify potential improvements.