Expand Stroke Needs Work

[RPCarruth]

Hi there,

I just wanted to let the team know that the Expand Stroke option needs some work—especially with curves. I've had multiple instances where A.D. gets this wrong and ends up giving me a shape that is not exact, and in some cases it looks really terrible. 

Below is one example—although not the most extreme case. This may look like nit-picking, but when Illustrator can get it spot on and when detail matters, this is an issue that will stop me from using the program.

Thanks for your time, and have a nice day.

P.S. Try Expanding the stroke of a circle. It's bad. I know there is a donut tool, but it's still an issue. 

 

[Alfred]

This problem is rather well known, unfortunately. The best advice seems to be to enlarge the object by a factor of at least 10 (or perhaps even as much as 100 if it's a very small object) before expanding the stroke, and then shrink it back down again afterwards.

 

[RPCarruth]

Thanks for the reply. I'll keep that in mind next time. I've already taken it in to Illustrator to tighten it up. I was too worried about what else it could be doing that I am not noticing yet.

It really sucks that you have to take these extra steps just to get the outcome you need with A.D.. I like the program a lot, but get really annoyed with all the work arounds. I wish they would lay off their other ventures and focus on fixing issues that should have been tested in the first place.

Have you heard if they are working on this, or if they are continuing to improve the program?

[MEB]

Hi RPCarruth,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Yes, this will be fixed. We are permanently improving the program but some features/bug fixes may take more time than others. Bear with us while we work on a fix.

[RPCarruth]

Thanks MEB! I appreciate the heads up.

I've also seen a bug where I copy an object, paste it, and the original shifts positions. Do you know if that is a known issue as well?

[Johannes]

Hey @MEB thanks for the effort and @Alfred thanks for the tip. I will try that next time.

I made a GIF to illustrate my experience what happens with Expand Stroke.

1. Ellipse (Stroke Width 0.3 pt)
2. Convert to Curves
3. Expand Stroke

The Lines become uneven and seem to change their position a bit.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Johannes
spelling and better image description

[Oval]

Nice dented Easter! If one does not know that the function works inaccurately, it can come after the production to the bad easter surprise.

 

Even through awkward large scaling you get no accurate results:

[Johannes]

[Oval]

Even such high magnifications do not guarantee accuracy:

[Johannes]

So maybe its not the relative magnification alone but also the size of the magnified object

test3.afdesign

[Dziggolo]

Any clues when this bug will be fixed? This is something that prevents me from moving to Affinity from IL...

[WhiteX]

Any news Serif?

[Oval]

On 27. Juli 2018 at 10:09 PM, WhiteX said:

Any news Serif?

Perhaps this:

20 hours ago, MattP said:

we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7

[Jay1991]

wow I just noticed this and was about to make my own thread about it thinking it was a weird new glitch or something, certainly didn't expect it to be a years old problem. It's been more than a year now since someone said it was being fixed, is this no longer the case?

Edited August 25, 2019 by Jay1991

[Oval]

On 25. August 2019 at 12:42 PM, Jay1991 said:

someone said it was being fixed, is this no longer the case?

Where, when? Never was fixed since about five years. But: You can get better results by using another problem as a “solution”: Increase “DPI” in “Document Setup…”. For example use 21893 dpi if the page size is not bigger than (DIN) A4. If you already started the work it is better to cut it and paste it after the DPI change.

[Jay1991]

9 hours ago, Oval said:

Where, when? Never was fixed since about five years. But: You can get better results by using another problem as a “solution”: Increase “DPI” in “Document Setup…”. For example use 21893 dpi if the page size is not bigger than (DIN) A4. If you already started the work it is meter to cut it and pate it after the DPI change.

Thanks for the workaround, here is the post I was referring to.

On 3/7/2018 at 11:32 AM, MEB said:

Hi RPCarruth,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Yes, this will be fixed. We are permanently improving the program but some features/bug fixes may take more time than others. Bear with us while we work on a fix.

 

"Affinity Designer is full of tools meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, while maintaining 100 percent accurate geometry."

"Affinity - the fastest, smoothest, most precise professional creative software."

Nobody else has a problem with sort of marketing? It's clearly not true, granted it only costs ~$50 and the second quote is a bit broad but

1. The lack of communication

2. The lack of progress

3. Misleading claims

is definitely concerning.

[LarrySunshine]

Just use InkScape if you want to save money. They will never fix it. After 4 years there is still no Envelope Distort tool which is crucial to certain types of designs. The Undo/Redo system is completely unusable and you get THIS piece of rotten cherry on top. It's just absolutely disgusting.

[Mithferion]

I use Inkscape but it doesn’t have all the features I need.

Best regards!

[dsnaps12]

Expand stroke is being worked on as we speak. the discussion is in this thead.

 

[Kuttyjoe]

Even Coreldraw has this exact problem, but in Coreldraw it's much worse and has been that way forever.

[Oval]

On 31. August 2019 at 10:14 PM, Kuttyjoe said:

in Coreldraw it's much worse

CorelDRAW® 2019 works extremely precisely in the same function, several times better than AD

and even if not, that should be no reason for Serif to sell inaccurate features / no reason not to mention them in Affinity Designer (Help) to protect users from production issues.

[Kuttyjoe]

On 9/2/2019 at 4:31 AM, Oval said:

CorelDRAW® 2019 works extremely precisely in the same function, several times better than AD

and even if not, that should be no reason for Serif to sell inaccurate features / no reason not to mention them in Affinity Designer (Help) to protect users from production issues.

I've been demonstrating this problem for Corel for probably a decade already.  I have a decades worth of examples of this feature not working in Coreldraw, including CoreDraw 2019.  Corel isn't fixing it.  I'm not excusing Serif.  I'm offering some perspective.  That perspective is basically, don't hold your breath waiting for this to get resolved.

I think a lot of people coming from Adobe took for granted that things just work properly, and that software is reliable and high quality.  When trying to switch to another product, we learn that this is not necessarily the case.

[Oval]

@Kuttyjoe

In direct comparison (from a 0.5 pt stroke):

CorelDRAW® 2019 delivers an exact result. 
 

“People coming from Adobe that took for granted that things just work properly”, have not really used A-dope.

[Joachim_L]

@Oval What dimension has the circle? From my own testing I would say, that a 5 mm circle is the limit. If the circle is smaller than 5 mm I can clearly see distortions. Maybe a workaround could be scaling up the elements, expanding the stroke and afterwards scaling down? <- Sorry, this was told before in this thread.

[A_B_C]

15 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Maybe a workaround could be scaling up the elements, expanding the stroke and afterwards scaling down?

Yes, this is the only workaround.