(AD) Selecting All Nodes In A Curve

[emjay]

Forgive me for what seems like a painfully simple question that anyone with half a brain should be able to find an existing answer to here on the forums or Google. I've tried my best, honest!

 

I just want to know how (if it's even possible) to select all nodes in a continuous curve without selecting all nodes in the entire shape. I know I can hold down modifiers and select each node one by one, as I did to create my screenshot here, or drag a selection around the nodes. That seems acceptable for very simple shapes like this, but it also seems like it would be very easy to find yourself in a situation where the curve is comprised of so many nodes and is sufficiently complex enough that selecting all of the nodes manually while avoiding the nodes of curves not connected to that one could be quite a time consuming process. Surely there is a key or a magical click that I'm missing which will do what I'm after, yes?

 

I assume the problem solves itself for grouped items, where you can just select the individual shape within the group, so maybe my example here of a boolean internal curve is the only case where this is actually a problem? Still, it feels like there's a super obvious way to do this that I'm missing.

I'm sure it's pretty clear I'm usually a raster guy, haha.

[gdenby]

The answer is not completely obvious. When there is a "curves" object, plural, it can be boolean self divided. Then each layer/object/portion may be selected, and in node tool mode, an "all" will grab the nodes. This is the same as selecting the object. At this point, the only mass change to the nodes I know of is changing between smooth/sharp. After doing a scale, or rotation, or change between smooth/sharp, the divided objects can be fused back to a single curve using other boolean operations. 

 

[emjay]

9 minutes ago, gdenby said:

The answer is not completely obvious. When there is a "curves" object, plural, it can be boolean self divided. Then each layer/object/portion may be selected, and in node tool mode, an "all" will grab the nodes. This is the same as selecting the object. At this point, the only mass change to the nodes I know of is changing between smooth/sharp. After doing a scale, or rotation, or change between smooth/sharp, the divided objects can be fused back to a single curve using other boolean operations.

That makes perfect sense now that I've given it a whirl, thank you! Since this method temporarily removes the visual result of the boolean subtract and it would be cool to have a live preview of that while editing, is it at all possible to keep the two shapes separate to begin with, but have essentially the same visual end result as a boolean subtract? I tried every iteration of masking or clipping of the two shapes to one another that I could think of, but I couldn't come up with something that reproduced it. So I suspect the answer is probably no, but I'm certainly novice enough with vectors for that not to be the case!
 

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, emjay said:

is it at all possible to keep the two shapes separate to begin with, but have essentially the same visual end result as a boolean subtract?

 

Click on the 'Add Layer' icon (third from the right, at the bottom of the Layers panel). Nest the two circles inside the new layer, with the smaller one on top. Set the blend mode for the smaller circle to 'Erase'.

 

[emjay]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Click on the 'Add Layer' icon (third from the right, at the bottom of the Layers panel). Nest the two circles inside the new layer, with the smaller one on top. Set the blend mode for the smaller circle to 'Erase'.

Oh, of course! Thanks so much to the both of you! You're super good peeps for taking time out of your days to help little ol' me. Hopefully someone with a similar thought will find this thread in the future too. 

[lepr]

.

 

[emjay]

16 minutes ago, owenr said:

To create a Compound, select two or more Curve/Curves or vector shape objects (such as Ellipse, Rectangle or Star, etc.) then Opt/Alt-click on a Boolean button at top of Designer window, or Opt-click on a Boolean command in Layer > Geometry submenu of Designer and Photo.

 

Amazing! This is exactly how I'd been hoping for it to work from the start. That sure is a sneaky little hidden feature. It'd be nice if the UI had some sort of exposed destructivity toggle within the Geometry menu or next to the boolean operation buttons to make that a little easier to discover, but I'm super thankful for it nonetheless!

[Alfred]

6 hours ago, owenr said:

Designer and Photo have non-destructive Boolean Compound vector objects. A Compound is a container of child Curve/Curves objects and/or nested Compounds and Boolean operators which is rendered as the vector combination of the children, and the children and the operators can be edited at any time, and children removed or added as desired, with a real time display of the combination.

 

I'm afraid I was so completely wrong-footed by the discussion which preceded my post that it didn't occur to me that this was what the OP was looking for.

[emjay]

7 hours ago, Alfred said:

I'm afraid I was so completely wrong-footed by the discussion which preceded my post that it didn't occur to me that this was what the OP was looking for.

 

The important part is that I came away from my question with three different approaches that I didn't know about, each of which have their own applications and merits! If I'd been told about the non-destructive boolean option from the start, I might never have learned those other tips, so I'm thankful for the different interpretations of what I was looking for.