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It is normal (& pretty much unavoidable) for items to disappear from the display when the zoom level is set so low that their size is smaller than the pixel resolution of the display, but it is not normal for them to disappear from printouts unless the DPI resolution is also set too low for them to be resolved by the printing method.

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GabrielM, thank you for asking. Attached is an example. I would love to know what you think. MANY THANKS!! 

R C - R, thank you also for your input. I'm working at 300dpi and all dots were created at the same time with the pencil tool. I have substituted new dots, and - although they show in zoom, they are printing as specks, not full dots.

dot mystery.afdesign

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I am not sure what you mean about printing as specks, not full dots. The curves are tiny -- some have less than 1 pixel widths or heights & at least one has a zero width. Their overall size comes from their strokes, so they are not really round dots. I am not sure how that would affect printing, though.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@SS Gilbert I would really like to know how you made the substitute dots. Because it seems like you've done the impossible. They are single node enclosed objects. Wow!! In Affinity world they shouldn't show up at all. That being said, they're appearing here as dots solely because of the Round Cap end line style.

If you change to Butt Cap they look like this, 1227330493_ScreenShot2018-06-27at6_54_24PM.png.32d8e3b6938422577f78c365e8070ca6.png. (and the stroke color here is black).

 

Oh, and the object pulled on a bit..... 67575672_ScreenShot2018-06-27at6_59_36PM.png.2c1cd024b661c676dd1fb91334f44f34.png

 

I've attached it for the Devs (@GabrielM) , or anybody else to look at. It's not two points on top of each other as far as I can tell!! And if you break the node, pull the now two nodes apart then bring them back together, they join into one and still exists as an object. Pretty weird.

 

 

one point closed object.afdesign

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For the substitute dots, I copy/paste a nearby dot. Dots consist of two nodes (caps) very close together. Often the nodes sit on top of one another. In your example, if you select break curve and pull on one, you'll get a curve instead of a circle. I hope this is helpful. Many thanks for contributing!

 

The substitute dots printed on another piece. I should have thought of it sooner.

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23 minutes ago, SS Gilbert said:

For the substitute dots, I copy/paste a nearby dot. Dots consist of two nodes (caps) very close together. Often the nodes sit on top of one another. In your example, if you select break curve and pull on one, you'll get a curve instead of a circle. I hope this is helpful. Many thanks for contributing!

Nope, the substitute dots are NOT two points.... I'm zoomed in 400 million% O.o. You might be confusing the bezier handle for a second node. It's not. By breaking the one node you create two, of course. I mentioned this in my post. Join them back together (not just on top of each other) and the object remains.

Ok. So you copied and pasted a nearby dot. How did you make the first one??

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@JimmyJack is absolutely right. You do not have a dot. You have one node with end cap on. 

@SS Gilbert I suggest you use the circle shape. You would expect this kind of result from an object that "does not exist". A vector has to have at least 2 points to be valid. Change them with proper circles and the issue will be gone. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

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2 hours ago, GabrielM said:

A vector has to have at least 2 points to be valid.

That is what I thought too ... until I saw the one point closed object @JimmyJack posted above. I know it is not valid in the traditional sense of a path being defined by separate start & end nodes, but it certainly behaves as if it was a valid one node curve. Very weird!

Weirder still, in the afdesign file @SS Gilbert posted try this: select one of the dot shapes & note that in the Transform panel almost all of them have both non-zero widths & heights. Even if you set the stroke style of one of these curves to none, if you zoom in far enough & rotate them, the 'phantom' path in the selection box rotates, which implies they have some extent greater than a single 'naked' point would have. You can also toggle 'Reset Selection Box' & see the width or height values in the Transform panel change appropriately.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Hi SS Gilbert,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Was this document originally created in Affinity or do you have imported it or some of its elements? What you have here are stray points - single node elements that don't have/fill any area. You have probably imported some elements or opened a file created originally in a third party app. There's quite a few ways they can appear/be generated in a few apps (including ours) when performing certain operations but they they usually only cause trouble. Some apps do offer commands to get rid of them/clean the file but currently Affinity doesn't offer such functionality. If you do want to create small dots use circles (shapes) instead as @GabrielM suggested above.

 

 

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These are more than stray single points. They are full fledged single node closed objects.... (almost).  They have volume, can support fills, line styles/brushes, pressure profiles, and most (this is why I said "almost" above) boolean operations... Add only seems to work if the single point is inside of the object you want to add to.

They can be recreated at will :)! (GIF below. The OP's objects are replicated, sans round caps, when one of the handles is deleted about 22secs in.)

(Not sure is this is a bug exploitation or not. Doing it any other way, i.e. deleting just three points of a circle etc yields no object at all.)

 

 

ezgif-2-d2332e7a81.gif

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1 hour ago, JimmyJack said:

The OP's objects are replicated, sans round caps, when one of the handles is deleted about 22secs in.)

You can even delete the other handle, leaving a single invisible sharp node, but it is still selectable by clicking on it in the Layers panel! If you do that & switch to the Node Tool, the square red node appears on the canvas, indicating it is indeed a sharp node. The Transform panel says it has zero width & height but you can change its x & y coordinates there or by dragging it around on the canvas with the Node tool.  :S

Both the looped & sharp node versions can be exported to svg. Maybe someone better at parsing them than I am can glean something from that.

looped node.svg

sharp node.svg

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1 hour ago, owenr said:

The weird curve does not really have just one node. It is a closed curve and it really has two nodes. A closed curve has one more node than the user interface makes it appear to have, with the end node being kept coincident with the start node.

 

Are you saying that "it" is a "they" but for all practical user interface interactions they're acting like a single point? i.e. One click to select and move (not click dragging a marquee to grab both). Two handles working together etc.

If they are merely coincident I would expect to be able to move each point independently... even if they are connected. If they are two coincident points (connected or not) I would expect to see only one handle when each is selected (at that proximity). And I would expect to be able to switch back and forth using shift + control drag.

If I add another node to the weird curve and break that new node, one of those points is now the (open) end point. Does the curve now have four nodes? Or did the original "weird" node now truly become one?

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I don't know if the weird curve actually has one node or two, or if there is any test that would decide that definitively. But consider this: it is possible to grab one of the handles with the Node Tool & drag it around until snaps to some point on the other handle's extent. The moved handle will turn red if you do that, in the same way that any other corner node's handle would.

This flattens the path in the same way as deleting one of the handles does (just like in JJ's gif) but now, if you drag out on the path (so you get the ~ badge on the Node Tool) the shape & size of the closed (?) curve starts changing erratically. Using Undo at this point leaves garbage on the screen if the curve has a stroke until it is updated like by zooming.

So this strongly suggests to me that there is at least one bug involved here, that there are probably several places where error trapping or such should prevent the creation of these "impossible" curves.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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31 minutes ago, owenr said:

Yes.

 

So I'm clear in my head... a closed rectangle, as far as the computer is concerned has five nodes? But only four as far as the user or any of the tools are concerned  concerned. But if one is broken, then there are five for both computer and user? 

And the two as one node hops around to whichever point is the head?

And.... then, if there are two nodes at the head tail junction, why can't I get a loop like the weird curve from the below when deleting the three selected nodes.

652559636_ScreenShot2018-06-28at5_35_07PM.png.87652814b6277f07e4ff151fcec5c2c6.png

 

 

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Thank you all for your input. To answer MED, I created the whole file in AD.

The advantage of using the pencil tool, gently stamping dots on my tablet, is speed. The circle tool would take forever. And, as I have noted above, the vast majority of them work - with virtually identical characteristics.

I appreciate the time you have all taken to try to solve this puzzle. 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, SS Gilbert said:

The advantage of using the pencil tool, gently stamping dots on my tablet, is speed. The circle tool would take forever. And, as I have noted above, the vast majority of them work - with virtually identical characteristics.

You can create the first circle, drag copy it to a new location, & continue doing that to get accurate, perfectly uniform results. Making the first circle a symbol & drag copying that gives you the ability to edit all the dots at once by editing any one instance, which can be incredibly useful if you decide to alter the proportions or make other changes later on that you could not otherwise do other than by selecting & editing each dot individually.

It is true that you may have to zoom in to make the drag copies with the Move Tool to avoid grabbing a resize handle instead of the object itself, but by using the keyboard shortcut to temporarily switch to the Pan tool, even that is quick & easy to do.

Basically, it is all about trade offs between speed & getting what you want or need.

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Quite true. This would have been quite easy if I wanted the dots to be uniform. Truth be told, I prefer the dots to look funky and different. Going in and changing each circle, when I may have 100 of them, would probably drive me -- well, dotty.

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