Merging shapes sometimes create inner lines

[Rafael Santos]

Hi,

First time poster, I'm learning Affinity Designer and am very happy with the results so far but ran into something unexpected.

I'm trying to merge some shapes and having different results. I've created two sets of shapes, shown below, and tried to merge them with the "Add" button (first one below):

When merging the (overlapping) ellipse and rectangle all works as expected -- the border is merged and is around the merged objects.

When merging the hexagons things are not working as expected: there are still some lines that are "inside" the merged object.

It get much worse when I have 10+ hexagons added together.

I can edit the lines and try to remove some of the inner lines but it is too much work and some of the nodes, when deleted, mess up the whole figure.

 

How can I merge the shapes and get rid of the inner lines?

The hexagons were created by using the pen tool, snapping to the first point and closing the curve.

 

thanks in advance

Rafael

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MEB]

Hi Rafael Santos,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

We are aware of a few issues with the boolean operations. Some situations/circumstances may lead to inaccurate results - we have a few ones logged and intend to improve the code as we move forward to better cope with them. With that said you can easily prevent this from happening if you add an additional node on one of the edges that is overlapping other hexagon and drag it a little over the area of the other hexagon so their edges don't overlap anymore and both hexagons intersect each other (see reference image below). This way the Add operations don't have to deal with overlapping edges and should give you an accurate result.

 

[Rafael Santos]

Hi Meb, obrigado pela resposta :-)

 

Thanks for the tip, I needed to be sure I wasn't missing something on this issue. 

In my design I was working with dozens of hexagons, pasted in different joining configurations. I will probably create some variants of the basic hexagon and add them together to see how it works.

 

thanks again

Rafael

 

[firstdefence]

I had this issue when making boxes with glue edges, I just created the shape I wanted with an overlap; I actually just created a reflection and merged them, then created assets from it, so now its very easy to make boxes.

 

 

 

[Checkmate]

Has there been any progress on this bug?

I am creating a 'swatch' shape with jagged edge and there are dozens of triangles along each edge that I need to combine with the inner square.

I realise I can add an overlap, but it'll be very time consuming for every little triangle (yes, yes, I could have used symbols then only had to edit one triangle, but too late now!).

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Checkmate said:

I realise I can add an overlap, but it'll be very time consuming for every little triangle

Why do you need to do it for every little triangle? Can’t you simply drag on the edges of the inner square?

[Checkmate]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

Why do you need to do it for every little triangle? Can’t you simply drag on the edges of the inner square?

Because dragging the edge of the square results in an unwanted overlap, so the corners of the triangles no longer meet (see image).

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Checkmate said:

Because dragging the edge of the square results in an unwanted overlap, so the corners of the triangles no longer meet (see image).

Thanks for the example. I can see the problem clearly now!

[firstdefence]

What about selecting all objects and then Layer > Create Compound You can also do alt + geometry add icon to create a compound shape.

[firstdefence]

11 minutes ago, Alfred said:

clearly now!

has the rain gone, Ive spotted several obstacles in my way already... 🤪

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

has the rain gone, Ive spotted several obstacles in my way already... 🤪

It was actually a bright, bright, sunshiny day here today, but it’s much too late for sunshine now!

[loukash]

On 3/19/2021 at 5:50 PM, Checkmate said:

I am creating a 'swatch' shape with jagged edge and there are dozens of triangles along each edge that I need to combine with the inner square.

It seems that the more rotated triangles, the more rounding errors; or something like that. Boolean operations desperately need improvement!

But one edge alone seems to boolean-add without errors.
Then duplicate, rotate 90°, align, power-duplicate, power-duplicate, add all:

  Edited February 25, 2024 by loukash
replaced *.mov with *.mp4

[loukash]

On 12/20/2017 at 12:02 PM, MEB said:

we […] intend to improve the code as we move forward to better cope with them

Er, @MEB, any progress, 3 1/3 1/4 years later…?

Edited March 20, 2021 by loukash
see below

[Alfred]

11 hours ago, loukash said:

Er, @MEB, any progress, 3 1/3 years later…?

<pedantry>
December was only three months ago, not four, so it’s 3¼ years rather than 3⅓.
</pedantry>