Stuck with a boolean subtraction issue, completely stumped

[Quarter]

For the life of me, I can not figure out why doing the subtract function on this one letter is not punching through completely? Other letters previously posed a problem, but then for some reason they magically started working. 

 

It basically gives a SUPER thin line punched out instead of the actual letter as a whole. Can anyone tell me what's going wrong here? I assume it has something to do with the large number of nodes on these letters specifically, but outside of that guess I'm stumped. To be absolutely clear as possible it's the green T in the file below that I'm trying to subtract from the black object behind it. 

Help.File.afdesign

[Alfred]

It sounds as though you've been subtracting the letters one at a time. Try adding them together to give you a 'Curves' object which you can subtract from the original black object in a single operation.

 

[Quarter]

Would you mind explaining why doing them individually doesn't work? I've ungrouped them. I usually do them individually because all at once tends to make things slow down/freeze. 

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Quarter said:

Would you mind explaining why doing them individually doesn't work?

 

I’d be only too happy to explain if I knew, but I’ve no idea!

 

It occurs to me that a simple solution would be to go back to the original text and round-cornered rectangle, set the blend mode of the text layer to ‘Erase’ and then group the two layers (so that whatever is placed behind/below those layers shows through, instead of also being partially erased by the text layer).

[lepr]

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[markw]

Hello Quarter.
Well I too have no idea what’s happening here but after doing the Subtract operation, as you found, there’s no hole punched through, just a lot of nodes in the shape of the N
Interesting thing is though if you zoom right in and start moving nodes it soon becomes apparent that you now have two spines forming the letter N, The top one has a black fill thus obscuring the N shaped hole under it.

[dutchshader]

Don't know what went wrong, but if you select the N and reverse the path it will substract.

[firstdefence]

The problem was crossed nodes and overlapping curves, I've just run around the curves edges and corrected approx 20 errors. Help.File + History.afdesign

 

This is an example

 

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

The problem was crossed nodes and overlapping curves

 

Great sleuthing! 

[firstdefence]

5 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

Great sleuthing! 

Elementary my dear Alfred.

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

Elementary my dear Alfred.

 

LOL.

 

[firstdefence]

With fonts like this you're always going to get node glitches and the only way is to trawl around the edges at a high zoom to spot the issues, there is no substitute for hands on grunt work. I even pasted the shape into illustrator to try node cleanup but that came back as no issues.

 

I wonder if there is a plugin for this sort of issue that can either highlight crossed curves etc so you can easily spot them.

 

Update: Astute do VectorFirstAid for Illustrator which looks pretty powerful but thats not much good for Affinity users unfortunately

[Move Along People]

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[firstdefence]

16 minutes ago, haakoo said:

This is the same issue as linked to below and the answer is there too,

copy the "n" and boolean add the two "n" copies>substract from the black part>done

 

Yep that works too

[dutchshader]

but why did it substract the seccond N correctly, it is the same font.

[firstdefence]

I would have to see the original file to work out what was going on. I'll still stick with the issue was caused by crossed nodes because once I had corrected those there was no need to do a boolean add with a copy. I suspect the boolean add corrects the crossed nodes but I'll check now to see if I can see some of the same glitches.

[firstdefence]

Nope all crossed nodes are still there but doing the duplicate, then boolean add to both N layers now removes the N from the background. I wonder if there is a break somewhere in the path and the add boolean closes the path?

[dutchshader]

I don't think there is a break, if the path is reversed it substracts

[Move Along People]

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[dutchshader]

But why does reversing the path close the shape

[Move Along People]

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[Alfred]

Reversing a path shouldn’t close it, but ‘Add’ will close the selected paths if they were open to begin with. I thought ‘Subtract’ worked the same way, but it can’t have done so here or there wouldn’t have been a problem.

[dutchshader]

6 minutes ago, haakoo said:

Quirkyness I suppose

 

Copying two shapes and adding them creates an object that can divide/substract.
But the single one doesn't?

 

Vremd 

[Move Along People]

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[firstdefence]

3 minutes ago, dutchshader said:

But why does reversing the path close the shape

Did a bit of zoomed in testing, reversing the curve doesn't change any of the red highlighted nodes, boolean adding a duplicate changes some of the red nodes but not all of them.