shrink/grow shape?

[a.beck]

Hello,

 

I bought Affinity Designer a few weeks ago and have been slowly but steadily learning to use it. It's a great app, and almost all my questions so far have been solved by a quick google search or searching these forums, but I've got one now that I just cannot figure out. I have a complex shape (Curve) that I want to duplicate and then shrink so that it forms a sort of border of uniform thickness around the inside of the original shape. A "normal" resize via the Transform panel throws all the proportions off.

 

I hope I'm explaining it properly. Is there a way to do this? In other apps I've used, it's been a matter of a Shrink menu command, and then inputting how much (usually in mm or pixels) I want it to shrink by. If such a menu item exists in A.D. I can't find it.

 

Thanks!

 

-Andrew

[toltec]

Have you tried Layer > Expand Stroke ?

 

It makes a double line/border from a single line.

 

[Guest]

Hello a.beck,

 

Maybe an "outline" fx?

[a.beck]

14 hours ago, toltec said:

Have you tried Layer > Expand Stroke ?

 

It makes a double line/border from a single line.

 

 

 

Yeah, I tried that, and if it worked in reverse (Contract) it would be a decent workaround, but the item I need to add the border to is currently the exact size I need, so I need the border to be smaller. It would also be ideal if the border line was an independent item.

 

Thanks though.

 

11 hours ago, reglico said:

Hello a.beck,

 

Maybe an "outline" fx?

 

 

Similarly, this is another "almost" workaround. The look is close to what I need, but I need control over the stroke of both lines, plus the gap. It is for a design which will be printed and followed for building something, so exact dimensions are critical.

 

Thank you for the idea anyway.

[toltec]

40 minutes ago, a.beck said:

 

Yeah, I tried that, and if it worked in reverse (Contract) it would be a decent workaround, but the item I need to add the border to is currently the exact size I need, so I need the border to be smaller. It would also be ideal if the border line was an independent item.

 

Thanks though.

 

If you set the Stroke Align to inside before you "expand" the path, it would be inside (Contracted).

 

You could then divide the "expanded" path to make two objects so it was independent.

 

 

The path was Expanded, then Divided to make it independent

 

You would have to play around with fill and stroke options a bit.

 

[a.beck]

Wow, that looks very much like what I need. I'll try it as soon as I have a chance.

 

Thank you!

[a.beck]

Yep, after a bit of trial and error, this ended up doing exactly what I needed. Thanks again.

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, a.beck said:

Yep, after a bit of trial and error, this ended up doing exactly what I needed.

It may not matter for your purposes but be aware that the Expand Stroke function has a nasty habit (a.k.a. a bug) in that it may add a lot of extra unneeded nodes to the curves it creates, like this:

To mitigate that a bit, if you duplicate the original curve, expand its stroke, & divide it, you can delete the outer node-heavy curve & use the inner one with the original.

[ericosmosNEW]

trying to do the same. can anyone elaborate on this?

I know how to set the stroke to inside, but how can I make the inner border of that stroke be recognized as a path?

[G13RL]

21 minutes ago, ericosmosNEW said:

how can I make the inner border of that stroke be recognized as a path?

Once "Expand Stroke" is done, select the set, "Layer", "Geometry", "Separate Curves". The two strokes will be independent.

[GarryP]

ericosmosNEW: Since this thread was started a few years ago we have been given the Contour Tool in Designer.

Just remember to duplicate the original shape before making a contour from the duplicate, or you will lose the original shape.

[ericosmosNEW]

ah, ok. got it.

So the stroke with its width is now an actual shape. Is there an easy way to not get a stroke as shape, but rather the inside shape created by the new borders of an inside stroke? Like, a contracted version of the original shape (or expanded if you want the shape to be expanded through an outside stroke...)

 

[ericosmosNEW]

figured it out. initially got some weird results due to additional (turned off) strokes that were applied to my curves.

[Mikegrebo]

@GarryPThe Contour Tool works well. Just what I needed for Window Clings. I used the Outline of my main image then srank it a tiny bit and made a solid White layer just under size, then used same to make an expanded size on another layer as a Cut file.