Break Curve and Join Curve not working.

[Gear maker]

I've seen lots of topics on Breaking curves and Joining curves and I am still having trouble.

 

I have an elongated rounded corner rectangle.  I'm trying to turn it into an elongated C.  I did an Expand Stroke.  Then I selected a node on the outside curve, hit Break Curve.  Then selected a node on the inside curve and hit Break Curve.  I can now move a node so that they look to be separate, no path between the nodes.  But the fill still continues between the broken nodes.

 

 

 

Then I try to do a join and they will not join.  I used the snap to get one node from the outside curve to align right over the node from the inside curve, select them both by holding shift and drawing a box around the two nodes, hit join curves.  And sure enough they are still separate.

 

I suspect the join just isn't going to work seeing as the fill continues along that they aren't truly broken.  I would guess that I couldn't have fill if I had two truly open curves.

 

Has anyone any ideas?  Has anyone tried breaking a shape following an Expand Stroke?

[MEB]

Hi Gear maker,

Regarding the fill, select your object go to the Pen tool, check Use Fill (on the context toolbar), then remove the check again. It should make your fill disappear. 

 

Regarding the nodes, after breaking them (resulting in two objects), select each one of the objects individually and press Close Curve button in the context bar (Node Tool).

 

 

In Affinity Designer you can have fills for open paths.

[Gear maker]

Fill for open paths, wow.  I don't see how the software could figure out where it would go.  It must remember where it was from.

 

I'll try what you suggest.  Because the two objects are from an Expand Stroke they are both in the same layer and when one is selected the other is automatically selected.  Or, do you mean select all nodes in both curves?  I didn't try selecting all nodes, just the two that overlap.

 

Thanks for the help MEB.

[Gear maker]

MEB, when I press Close Curve I get my O back instead of a C.  I even turned the end nodes until they almost touched and they still jumped the long distance to where they were when I broke the curve.  I tried selecting the curves and I tried selecting all nodes in both curves.  No difference, still O's.

 

I then tried to snap the end nodes from both curves together.  Pressed Close Curve and it still completed the O just very misshapen. The inside curve tried to heal and the outside curve tried to heal.

[J.L. Forrest]

It's 2019, and I'm having this problem now.

[Aammppaa]

@J.L. Forrest Can you be a bit more specific?

Perhaps a screenshot or provide the file along with a description of what you are trying to achieve.

Then I'm sure we can help

[SS Gilbert]

It's 2020, I have had this problem since the last 2 updates. I select 2 lines with the shift key, move one node on top of the other, and nothing happens. Join curves is greyed out, so can"t select it.

Any suggestions?

 

 

[Gear maker]

On 11/17/2020 at 7:01 AM, SS Gilbert said:

It's 2020, I have had this problem since the last 2 updates. I select 2 lines with the shift key, move one node on top of the other, and nothing happens. Join curves is greyed out, so can"t select it.

What's happened is that your shape has been auto closed when you dropped the one ending node exactly on top of the other end node.  If you grab one of the nodes you will move both ends as they are no longer separate.  That's why the Join Curves is grayed out.  But for some reason your shot shows Break Curve grayed out which it shouldn't be.  Instead the Close Curve should be grayed out.  Check to see if this is really how it's shown.

On a closed curve when any node(s) is selected Break Curve should be usable.  But Join and Close should not.  But when an end node is selected on an open curve Break will be grayed and Join and Close will be usable.  I hope that helps.  As you can tell from my entries from 6 years ago I fought figuring out what was going on.  The auto close still bites me sometimes when I am just trying to have the 2 end nodes very close but not closed.  I have one application I draw frequently that has this case and I've found workarounds that aren't too difficult.

[SS Gilbert]

Thank you, Gear maker. Sometimes it auto closes, but most of the time it does not. 

[Gear maker]

47 minutes ago, SS Gilbert said:

Thank you, Gear maker. Sometimes it auto closes, but most of the time it does not.

Yup, I always have to check.  Have fun.