hannah Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 Hello fellows, Can someone pleeeeeaaase explain to me how I can reuse only a part of a path? I manage to mark several points, I can drag them around or delete them, but when I copy and paste them, Affinity Designer pastes me the whole path instead (not just the nodes I've previously selected). I'm only familiar with adobe illustrator, where this method (selecting, copy/paste) works like a charm. It's like an everyday thing to do for me and thus quite important for my work. Thank you for your help and thank you guys from Affinity for that awesome application! DesignByAdrian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted February 7, 2018 Staff Share Posted February 7, 2018 Hi hannah, Welcome to Affinity Forums It's not possible to perform the copy/paste operation of nodes/segments in Affinity Designer as you do in Illustrator. If you want to reuse part of a path you have to duplicate it then break the nodes that surround the segment you want - see clip below. DesignByAdrian 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hannah Posted February 8, 2018 Author Share Posted February 8, 2018 Thank you very much MEB for this quick response and your explanation! Though I must say that rather feels like a laborious work-around than a workflow-sustaining solution to me... similar to using "intersect" to achieve this. well, nothing is perfect i guess. May I ask you if developers are on this subject? Or is there any way to more officially ask for the implementation of a beloved feature? bon courage DesignByAdrian and Jowday 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hannah Posted February 8, 2018 Author Share Posted February 8, 2018 sorry, never mind, just found it. Here, for anyone else looking: Common feature request index Feature request section Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil K. Posted September 3, 2018 Share Posted September 3, 2018 This workaround is laborious to say the least. So I have to copy an entire layer just to get a few line strokes? DesignByAdrian 1 Quote iPad Pro 9.7” (A1674), Affinity Designer for iPad 1.6.4.45 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvGa Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 (edited) On 2/7/2018 at 8:44 PM, MEB said: Hi hannah, Welcome to Affinity Forums It's not possible to perform the copy/paste operation of nodes/segments in Affinity Designer as you do in Illustrator. If you want to reuse part of a path you have to duplicate it then break the nodes that surround the segment you want - see clip below. How do I copy a part of the shape? For example this "O". I tried to copy and paste and it pastes the whole vector. Edited November 17, 2020 by EvGa Thomahawk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 17, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 17, 2020 Hi @EvGa, Welcome to Affinity Forums As i explained in that post you quoted, it's not currently possible to copy just part of a shape. You have to duplicate the whole shape and break the nodes that limit the segment you want. See the animated GIF below to learn how to break/separate part of a shape. DesignByAdrian 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvGa Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 Hmm... People asking for these features more 2+ years. Why don't you add them yet? sbe, Thomahawk and DesignByAdrian 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvGa Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 12 minutes ago, MEB said: Hi @EvGa, Welcome to Affinity Forums As i explained in that post you quoted, it's not currently possible to copy just part of a shape. You have to duplicate the whole shape and break the nodes that limit the segment you want. See the animated GIF below to learn how to break/separate part of a shape. This happened when I Break Curves, which is totally not what I want. DesignByAdrian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 17, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 17, 2020 Sorry. At the time i saw the post the image you attached were not visible. I see now you are working with text. If you want to separate the inner and outer parts of the O letter select it and hit the Divide button (boolean operation) in the main toolbar. You will have to duplicate the shape if you wish to keep the original O intact and delete the part (inner or outer line of the O) you don't need. Let me know if i misunderstood your question. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvGa Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 No, I don't want to divide it. I want to copy the "O" This is just an example, I could copy the whole shape and keep only the second O but the point is... How do I copy only the shapes I want? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 17, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 17, 2020 Seems the whole "pesto" word is a single path. In that case duplicate it, then delete the nodes of the other letters until you end up just with the O. Currently there's no way to copy/paste nodes from a compound path as is the case here. There's other ways to do this but deleting the other letters instead seems the quickest. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 I am really confused as to why you cannot just select the O in Pesto. I would think that either the Node tool or the Move tool should be able to select the O. I would like to see the layers panel expanded to show the layer(s) for Pesto. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 17, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 17, 2020 Old Bruce, This is a compound path. All letters belong to the same path, they are not separate entities. You can "move" just the O letter by moving it's nodes but it's still part of the whole pesto word path (meaning if you select the O letter the whole word gets selected). You can recreate this by simply writing "pesto" and pressing Add (boolean operation). The resulting shape is what the OP is dealing with. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 40 minutes ago, MEB said: Seems the whole "pesto" word is a single path. In that case duplicate it, then delete the nodes of the other letters until you end up just with the O. Currently there's no way to copy/paste nodes from a compound path as is the case here. There's other ways to do this but deleting the other letters instead seems the quickest. I would simply use the ‘Separate Curves’ command to put each contour on a separate layer. The counters (‘holes’) in the P and the O will disappear, but you can easily retrieve them by subtracting the ‘hole’ layer from its partner in each case. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted November 17, 2020 Staff Share Posted November 17, 2020 The Separate Curves command (or Divide) will break up everything including the holes of the letters. It way quicker to duplicate the word and delete the nodes of the other letters in this instance. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvGa Posted November 17, 2020 Share Posted November 17, 2020 The point is, you can't copy paths but only shapes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viterzbayraku Posted January 12, 2021 Share Posted January 12, 2021 It's sad, how it's uncomfortable 😥 DesignByAdrian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesignByAdrian Posted August 11, 2021 Share Posted August 11, 2021 That I can't simply delete a path between two anchor points just like in Adobe Illustrator is infuriating at best. Why is there even both a pen and node tool? It should be the same tool. sbe 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted August 11, 2021 Share Posted August 11, 2021 6 hours ago, DesignByAdrian said: That I can't simply delete a path between two anchor points just like in Adobe Illustrator is infuriating at best. In Affinity, you can delete a path segment between two nodes of a curve object, but ellipses, cogs, stars, & the other parametrically adjustable 'quick shapes' are not considered to be curves. One reason for this is so the parameters of these shapes can be adjusted non-destructively (like with the number of points of a star) or for the ellipse shape, converted to a donut or pie quick shape. Of course, you can convert any quick shape to a curve object if you want to delete part of it, but the tradeoff is it will no longer be parametrically adjustable. Just guessing, but maybe this is why you can't delete a path segment of a non-curve object in Affinity without explicitly doing that extra conversion step -- it provides sort of a fail-safe check on what the user wants to do, like an 'are you sure you want to do this' dialog but less intrusively. 6 hours ago, DesignByAdrian said: Why is there even both a pen and node tool? It should be the same tool. The Pen Tool is for drawing curves. The Node Tool is for adjusting the nodes of already created curves. Because the Node Tool provides functions the Pen Tool cannot (like selecting one or more curve objects or nodes) the Pen Tool can temporarily be toggled to the Node Tool with a hot key. Alfred 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andro Posted January 3, 2022 Share Posted January 3, 2022 On 2/7/2018 at 12:44 PM, MEB said: Hi hannah, Welcome to Affinity Forums It's not possible to perform the copy/paste operation of nodes/segments in Affinity Designer as you do in Illustrator. If you want to reuse part of a path you have to duplicate it then break the nodes that surround the segment you want Maybe implement that? is vital. DesignByAdrian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 5, 2022 Staff Share Posted January 5, 2022 Hi @Andro; Welcome to Affinity Forums Thanks for your feedback. This isn't available as you are aware but there's still another way to "replicate" a path that may be useful in certain circumstances. Please check the clip below for details: dragging a node over another one in other shape and waiting a couple seconds will copy/mimic that node's properties to the node you are dragging (make sure the cursor switch to the duplicate cursor). Regarding copying path nodes, I suggest you create a new thread (if there isn't one already) in the Feature Request section and add you voice there as it's the first place the developers look for feedback from users. Thanks. replicate.mp4 thedivclass and G13RL 1 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesignByAdrian Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 What on earth? That's probably one of the most cumbersome ways of copying a path I've ever seen! Adobe Illustrator: arrow tool, click and drag over anchor points you want to copy. ctrl-c, ctrl-v Affinity Designer: use one tool to draw the correct number of points, whilst making sure the line has the same attributes as the one you wish to copy, use another tool to click and drag each and every point onto the other path. Success? Fail. It seems that Affinity Designer is not built by designers for designers at all. Very disappointing. Thomahawk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 6, 2022 Staff Share Posted January 6, 2022 Hi @DesignByAdrian, Welcome to Affinity Forums Thanks for your feedback. As i explained above copy nodes is not available in Designer. The process i showed above is just a workaround that may help in some situations or when you need to match another path - it's not the same feature. It's not intended to be a "replacement" for a true copy nodes function - that's why i suggested to add that feature to the Features Request list in my previous post. You can also duplicate the whole shape and delete the segments you are not interested as a workaround until a better option becomes available. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andro Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 Quote Regarding copying path nodes, I suggest you create a new thread (if there isn't one already) in the Feature Request section and add you voice there as it's the first place the developers look for feedback from users. Thanks. As an Affinity Forum Moderator / Staff Member, shouldn't you be filing these kind of things? I really like Affinity but you have to admit this kind of issues are a real downer. Copying and pasting nodes and segments is a must. Sorry but this has to get attended asap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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