Affinity Designer & Photo - Interlocking

[AntonJ]

Hi,

 

I've been using both Designer & Photo now for about a week, and I've completed a load of advanced tutorials in both to get to the basics up to more advanced stuff. However, the one tutorial that I cannot find is how to interlock overlapping segments of objects. Think the Olympic rings.

I'd really appreciate it if there's someone who can guide me in this regard.

 

Thank you,

:rolleyes:

[A_B_C]

Please have a look at my documents below, Anton. It details two basic methods to achieve what you want:

• Create the yellow circle (level 1), and the blue circle above (level 2).
• Duplicate the yellow circle and move the duplicate above the blue circle in the layers list (level 3).
• Convert the duplicate (level 3) to a curve, and add two additional nodes around the desired interweaving point.
• Break the duplicate curve at these points and delete the unwanted parts of the curve.

As far as I can see, this method has the disadvantage that there might be small interpolation errors when breaking the curve. So there is another, more precise way to do it:

• Create the green circle (level 1), and the red circle above (level 1).
• Duplicate the green circle and move the duplicate above the red circle in the layers list.
• Now create a small rectangle at the interveaving point on top of the duplicate of the green circle, and make the duplicate a child of this rectangle in the layers list. Thereby you will mask the unwanted parts of the duplicate on level 3.

Here is some more context to both methods:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4195-using-vector-masks/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4408-how-to-do-a-weave/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4069-layer-clipping-vs-layer-masking/?p=16825

 

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex 

Olympic.afdesign

[AntonJ]

Alex, thank you very much for your response. Also, thanks for giving me two options. I'll look at both of them and see which one works better for different ideas.

[joSe]

On 21/12/2016 at 9:49 AM, A_B_C said:

As far as I can see, this method has the disadvantage that there might be small interpolation errors when breaking the curve. So there is another, more precise way to do it:

• Create the green circle (level 1), and the red circle above (level 1).
• Duplicate the green circle and move the duplicate above the red circle in the layers list.
• Now create a small rectangle at the interveaving point on top of the duplicate of the green circle, and make the duplicate a child of this rectangle in the layers list. Thereby you will mask the unwanted parts of the duplicate on level 3.

 

I know this is an old thread ...

 

Though when I use the Masking method (quoted above) for me it's not scalable as when I change the size of the objects the whole thing gets messed up and it no longer matches the shape.

 

So maybe this makes masking not that scalable for this purpose? (or in general? Still trying to wrap my head around Masking)

[Guest]

Hi joSe,

You can also use the "Donut" tool to create circles.

For my example I drew a blue donut, I duplicated it, moved to the right and colored it in red. Then I pasted a second time the blue donut on itself (so over the other two in the layers). Then by setting "Start angle" and "End angle" of the upper blue donut, I discovered the part of the red circle that should appear.

This method allows resizing without loss of quality.

[Guest]

You can also draw a blue circle, duplicate it and move it to the right, color it in red. Paste the blue circle a second time on itself. Select the three circles, "Expand stroke". Then draw a transparent shape (rectangle or other) on the crossover to be modified and cover it completely.

Then select the upper blue circle and the transparent shape, perform a "Subtract" Boolean operation.

Resizing does not affect the drawing.

[joSe]

Wow, my mind is blown :).

 

you truelly are an Advanced Member :).

 

Thank you.

 

The Donut option is the easiest. There is not something like that for more rectangular shapes, right?

[Guest]

For shapes with straight lines, such as rectangles, you can draw the three rectangles, convert the upper rectangle to curves ("Layer", "Convert to Curves"), then, with the "Node tool", add a node on each side of the red part (in my screenshot). Then select one of the nodes you just created and click on the "Break Curve" button (in the context bar, first button to the right of "Action"). Repeat for the second node that you created. You can then delete the part between these two nodes.