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i got drawings to work with that contain curve layers with more than one curve stored on that specific layer. because this is not how affinity designer works, i would like to have every single line on another layer, so i can group them and change thickness and style. i tried divide. but most of the time it all gets messed up.. is there a way around? 
thank you :)

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Hi m.archi,

Yes, that's the issue here. Your original object is composed by individual lines not paths (with holes) which can be separated in individual "shapes". When you use the Divide operation in Affinity, it converts all lines to closed paths (meaning the line overlaps itself so it can be closed) thus the results you are getting. I'm passing this file to the dev team. One question: where did you get this file from (do you know which application exported it)?

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 All the lines are closed curves now , which causes problems quite often...

Not true. As MEB said you have a lot of short, individual lines in your file. They are not closed curves because a closed curve is a path that has no endpoints that completely encloses an area. The straight lines in your file are not closed paths because they do not enclose any area.

 

One way to visualize this is to think of the curve as a walking path. If you can start walking anywhere on it & without reversing direction eventually end up at your starting point, then it is a closed path. The width of the path (analogous to the stroke width) does not matter.

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As MEB noted, open paths are closed when the divide boolean is used. The same is true of the other booleans. Designer appears to have a default definition of a shape as being an area with its periphery as defined by a closed line.

 

If you want to manipulate lines that do not enclose any area so they are either broken, or joined, use the node tool, and break or close curve.

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i got all that. The thing is that Rhino, the software that exported the drawing has put several open curves into one curve-layer 
so you can't break down the Drawing in the Layers Panel.  
So what I actually want to achieve is to kind of detach alle the open curves an see them as individuals curves in the Layers Panel
that way i would be able to group them and change the style of individual curves.
I can make a copy of the drawing, delete all lines except one.. repeating this process with all the lines .. and i would end-up with the result i want to get. but that would take hours and hours..
I hope you get what i want so say..

 

 

Curves problem.pdf

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I dont know if i understood that correctly, is this a problem with AD or is the divide tool just not supposed to work for this purpose ?

And if so, is there or will there be be a way to to this? thanks :)

 

No, the divide tool will only work with closed compound paths, not with individual lines. Basically Affinity only allows you to perform boolean operations between closed paths (no matter if you are adding, subtracting or performing any other boolean operation). If a line is not closed, it will close it automatically before peforming the boolean operation. So in this case there's no way to break the "curve" to get its individual lines inside Designer. Issue logged to be looked at.

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if you open the file i attached, select the Rhino-Layer and divide it, the result needs corrections.. but in a big file with many lines.. this would take a lot of time. 

 

I've been reading the .svg specs. It is possible to read the file in a text editor. I'm not clear enough w. the .svg terms, and I'm not nearly handy enough w. my text editor, but attached is a proof of concept.

 

slice1d.afdesign

 

Essentially did a find and replace. I'd moved a couple of nodes around in an earlier iteration. At least w. an .svg that has simple sytax, I'm pretty sure the breaking into separate segments should be 1 or 2 commands.

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Literally three seconds in Inkscape: Break Apart & Ungroup. (new svg attached)

 

Now you're left with simple line segments, disjointed as they may be.... which is what you wanted I think.

But, if you want to fill anything, you're back into the frying pan ^_^ . (although, that was going to be a problem anyway, I guess)

 

(btw: Why is the the Rhino exporter unwelding every single point?? Does it do that on a simple/single box or circle? How would you ever get a working fill? I believe I've seen a fairly robust svg export plugin that even "tries" to keep some sort of element/layer hierarchy in the export. I think it uses order of creation.)

curves problem-2 inkscape.svg

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Literally three seconds in Inkscape: Break Apart & Ungroup. (new svg attached)

 

Now you're left with simple line segments, disjointed as they may be.... which is what you wanted I think.

But, if you want to fill anything, you're back into the frying pan ^_^ . (although, that was going to be a problem anyway, I guess)

 

(btw: Why is the the Rhino exporter unwelding every single point?? Does it do that on a simple/single box or circle? How would you ever get a working fill? I believe I've seen a fairly robust svg export plugin that even "tries" to keep some sort of element/layer hierarchy in the export. I think it uses order of creation.)

 

thank you for this Tip with Inkscape! 

 

i dont think you could export architecture plans so you get a working fill. its just not how these plans work.. you do get the hierarchy of lines with the export, but sometimes you want to change that later on.. 

 

 

No, the divide tool will only work with closed compound paths, not with individual lines. Basically Affinity only allows you to perform boolean operations between closed paths (no matter if you are adding, subtracting or performing any other boolean operation). If a line is not closed, it will close it automatically before peforming the boolean operation. So in this case there's no way to break the "curve" to get its individual lines inside Designer. Issue logged to be looked at.

Do You think that this feature (Break Apart & Ungroup) could be implemented into future Affinity Designer versions?

 

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i dont think you could export architecture plans so you get a working fill. its just not how these plans work.. you do get the hierarchy of lines with the export, but sometimes you want to change that later on.. 

Have you seen the Affinity Designer - Grids: Floor Plans video tutorial? Some of the techniques it shows may be adaptable to your architectural work.

 

Regarding a Break Apart & Ungroup feature, I doubt many users would find it useful -- it is not unusual for vector documents to have hundreds if not thousands of line segments & it is usually much more convenient & quicker to work with shapes & curves than individual segments. Of course, you can add this to the Feature Requests section if it is something you would find useful.

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In Rhino you get the sections, Floor plans etc. generated out of the 3D model. You don't have much control how the lines are generated from the model.

I get what you are saying. I recognised that Affinity Designer names these layers with more than one curve "curves" and the ones wirh line or parh "curve". Its quite annoying to find a eloquent solution. But thank you all.

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