Design not recognized as finished or closed image? How to fix this??

[justmaggie]

Hello all.

I have been desperately trying to figure this out for a few days now, and am at the point with this program that I want to throw my whole computer out the window..

Anyways, I have a design that I've used several times before, yet now for some reason affinity is not recognizing it as a closed path, closed image, or a whole design at all. 
I can only select line work, the nodes (should be??) all connected.. Yet when I attempt to fill the image, the fill is all over the place as if the paths are not connected or that I'm trying to fill non-closed space. I don't understand. I normally can select one section, for example, the horns of the this skull design and fill it with a color. So on and so forth.

I don't know whats going on and I'm really hoping I'm just overlooking a simple fix.

I've tried connecting paths, snapping nodes, grouping, ungrouping, I'm not even sure what else to list but I have run out of options. 
I attached the exact file that I'm working with below... please help!

-MC

jellypins ram design.afdesign

[Gabe]

Hi @justmaggie,

Welcome to the forums. 

I've had a look at your file and most of the curves are open paths, not closed. That's why you cannot fill them properly. I cannot see any history with the document, so it's hard to tell what happened. But just by looking at this specific one, it looks as it's never been a close-shape object. If you want to fill it, you would have to manually close it. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[R C-R]

The nodes can't all be connected because a path can have only one starting & one ending node. (Closed paths have a single node that is effectively both the starting & ending node.) So what you would need to do fill the design with colors is to break & join paths as needed so they can be filled individually, something like this jellypins ram modified.afdesign.

All the curves do not need to be closed. For example, the group at the bottom of the layers stack consists of 3 open curves. The white layers above it hide part of the paths so it doesn't matter if they are closed or not. Layer clipping can help by hiding parts of a path as well, like in the 4th from the top curve that clips part of the smaller path that is clipped to it. 

[gdenby]

Hi, justmaggie,

You have a mis-conception many people seem to have at the start. If you select any of the lines, you will see that each one has a black stroke, and no fill. A curve in AD can be closed or unclosed. Both types can have 2 attributes, a fill and a stroke. In your work, you have all unclosed curves w. only a stroke attribute.It you click on any of them, and assign a fill, you will see a solid color that extends between the 1st and last nodes of the unclosed curve.

There is a way to remedy this, tho' it may seem a little complex. 

Select all the curves at once. Use the layer/expand stroke command. This will turn all the stroke attributes into individual black filled curves.  With them still all selected, use the geometry Add operation. This will create a layer called "curves." The spaces between the lines are empty, and not defined as vectors.

Next, use the geometry Divide operation. You will end up w.what appears to be a solid black silhouette. But note that there are now many curves, all black showing in the layer panel. You now have lines that can be colored, and shapes also. There will be some miniscule fragments left from the divide operation, which probably can all be discarded. 

Attatched, my attempt at this, took less time than typing the post.

jellypins ram filled.afdesign

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, gdenby said:

Attatched, my attempt at this, took less time than typing the post.

That method is very fast & perfect for many uses, but there are a few things to be aware of that might make it not the best choice for some other uses:

1. It creates a zillion nodes.
2. Because everything that originally was just a line is now a filled curve with many nodes, it can greatly complicate changing the design later on.
3. It may create opaque areas where they are not desired, like the space inside the curve of one of the horns.

For the opacity issue, the topmost shape can be subtracted from the one(s) below it, but when several layers are below the top one(s) this can get complicated.

So for some projects it is a good idea to plan ahead to use a combination of closed shapes, lines, layer stacking, & clipping as much as is possible to keep the design simple & easy to edit.