Deleting overlapping lines/shapes. Boolean operations do not work. No shape builder. No Knife tool. No vector erasure.

[tomgreen]

The attached image shows a simplified version of what I am trying to achieve. I believe this should be a very simple thing to do but after spending over 2 hours with affinity designer I am now at a complete loss.

My aim is simple, to keep the diagonal lines between the 2 curves and delete the excess, the result would be the lines in green. The shape on the right is the result of the divide option, this is not what I expected at all. It is not good enough to simply hide or mask the lines, (which is how I created the green shapes), as the file is to be sent to a laser engraver, this also means shapes cannot be expanded.

As I mentioned this is a simplified version of what I want to achieve and so it is not suitable to select individual nodes on the diagonal lines and drag them to the curves as there will be hundreds of them, it is also not suitable to add nodes where the lines overlap the curves and then delete the unwanted nodes.

In illustrator this would have taken seconds, select all, divide, and then delete unwanted nodes. Alternatively the diagonal lines could be converted to a compound shape and the circle used to delete unwanted areas using boolean operations. The boolean operations in AD do not work in any way that I would expect.

I have been using graphics software for over 20 years, in all that time I have never found anything as unintuitive as AD. I have been patient and tried and tried but in 4 years of ownership I have not been able to complete a single project with this software. There is no shape builder tool, no knife tool and no vector eraser, so many basic things are missing, many of which have been requested since 2014.

If anyone could enlighten me as to how this most basic of functions can be achieved I would be very grateful.

[Guest]

Hello tomgreen,

You must "Expand Stroke" lines and the arc of the circle before doing the Boolean operation "Divide".

[Pšenda]

How easy :-)

[gdenby]

Hi, tomgreen,

Unfortunately, the way Illustrator, for example, and Designer work appear to be fundamentally different. At present, Designer works w. enclosed areas with stroke and fill attributes, thus the need for expanding a stroke to cut strokes so the stroke itself is a defined area.

Lots of people on this forum have expressed the desire for a knife/scissor tool, and or a vector eraser. Be glad to see them. 

Don't know if the attached works for your purposes, but it took a couple of minutes.

QuickClip.afdesign

[firstdefence]

Using the Intersect as the final action is probably the key, Also creating the boolean shape to intersect with prior is a time saver.

Create the shape to intersect with...

 

Create the lines to Intersect with the shape above...

 

Expand the Stroke...

 

Select all of the expanded Lines and Boolean Add them together...

 

Now select both shapes and Boolean Intersect them to leave the lines you need...

 

End Result.

[tomgreen]

19 hours ago, reglico said:

Hello tomgreen,

You must "Expand Stroke" lines and the arc of the circle before doing the Boolean operation "Divide".

@reglico Thank you for your input, but as I mentioned in my post expanding the stroke is not an option as the file is to be sent to a laser cuter.

17 hours ago, Pšenda said:

How easy :-)

@Pšenda What is is easy? If you have the answer please elaborate.

@gdenby @firstdefence Thank you guys for taking the time and effort to reproduce my dilemma. My problem is that masking paths and outlining strokes will not work. If you go to outline mode you will see why as this is exactly what the laser software see when it imports. Outlined strokes mean that the laser will burn around the outer edge of every single line, this not only doubles the time it takes but means it cuts deeper instead of just making a light score. When there are hundred of lines this is a real problem. Also the software does not recognise nested or masked layers and simply imports all paths seen in outline mode, so again this is not an option.

Thank you for your efforts though, if it was something as "easy" as Psenda seems to think then I have no doubt I would have worked it out and not needed to post here. The only answer I can see would be to manually move every single line which would be unbelievably time consuming. As it is, it seems that AD has absolutely no efficient way of editing, dividing or deleting sections of paths and so I'll have to put this down to yet another time I am unable to use this software because it is missing basic functions.

[gdenby]

tomgreen,

I came up w. something that might work, tho' it is a bit tedious, and has some quirks depending on what the shapes are like.

Good to know you are sending the files to a laser cutter which explains why expanded and masked strokes don't work.

Here's a quick description of what is in the attached illustration. There is a "moon" crescent. A bunch of simple vectors over it. Those vectors are all selected, and in node mode, joined. Here is one of the quirks. In most of what I tried, the join operation snakes from one curve to the next, but sometimes does add an odd diagonal. Not certain how to work around that.

Then, the joined vectors are subtracted from the crescent. Select the resulting curves in node tool mode, select all, and use the break curve widget. Sometimes this will separate every line segment. Other times there will be remaining "curves," which need to be divided.

Then the tedious part. Weeding thru all the curves not needed, and deleting them. In the example I show, it was not terribly hard, no more clicks than playing some solitaire, and much more certain to "win" w. a set of exactly cut vectors.

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, tomgreen said:

What is is easy? If you have the answer please elaborate.

The solution from reglico seems to me to be easy enough.
If you do not like it, Clipping can be used (without Expand Stroke).

[R C-R]

22 hours ago, gdenby said:

Unfortunately, the way Illustrator, for example, and Designer work appear to be fundamentally different. At present, Designer works w. enclosed areas with stroke and fill attributes, thus the need for expanding a stroke to cut strokes so the stroke itself is a defined area.

The requirement in Designer is that each stroke path encloses an area -- they don't have to be filled or closed. So, while it is neither quick nor simple, one tedious way to avoid expanding curves is like this:

tedious geometry example.afdesign

A knife tool is on the Designer roadmap, so hopefully things like this will be easier & more straightforward in a future update.

[Guest]

@R CR, unfortunately this method does not allow to keep only the segments between the arc of circle and the circle for the precise case proposed by @tomgreen: two kinds of different open lines and a closed shape.

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, reglico said:

@R CR, unfortunately this method does not allow to keep only the segments between the arc of circle and the circle for the precise case proposed by @tomgreen: two kinds of different open lines and a closed shape.

Yes, I know that. I only wanted to point out that since the booleans operate on the area enclosed by the curves, they do not have to be closed or filled. For the OP's case, this would mean converting the circle to a curve, breaking it into two open curves, deleting the one farthest from the arc shape, & joining those two remaining curves, resulting in an open curve like the green one in my step 1.

Since expanding strokes is not acceptable for this use with a laser engraver, for now I don't see any way to keep just the desired stroke segments other than the ones that require a lot division & tedious deletion of the unwanted parts.

[gdenby]

To clarify my verbiage, my understanding of the way Designer works is that the vector implies an enclosed area. In ordinary use, one will see at least unclosed fills and stroke lines. 

In my example above, by joining the vector curves, that reduces the problem of Designer's default of closing open paths. As I mentioned, one get's a "snake" that can cut out from the underlying area w/o adding a delimiting line between the ends of each separate curve.

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, gdenby said:

In my example above, by joining the vector curves, that reduces the problem of Designer's default of closing open paths. As I mentioned, one get's a "snake" that can cut out from the underlying area w/o adding a delimiting line between the ends of each separate curve.

I like the "snake" joining method -- it could be useful for several different things. But we are still left with problems like the quirks you mentioned when a join creates a diagonal (maybe because joining curves tries to join nearest pairs of nodes?), the annoying way Designer's booleans insist on closing open paths, & the need to break all those closed shapes & tediously delete what could be dozens or even hundreds of the unwanted open curves that leaves us with.

[gdenby]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I like the "snake" joining method -- it could be useful for several different things. But we are still left with problems like the quirks you mentioned when a join creates a diagonal (maybe because joining curves tries to join nearest pairs of nodes?), the annoying way Designer's booleans insist on closing open paths, & the need to break all those closed shapes & tediously delete what could be dozens or even hundreds of the unwanted open curves that leaves us with.

Yes, cutting away the unwanted curves remains. I used the term "weeding" because it is what the vinyl sign sellers called removing the unwanted bits before they delivered the cut out letters or designs. At this point, very old school.

[Oval]

after expanding something like the opposite of Expand Stroke is needed (a new command ) … but vectorizing is the quickest way (if not manually with a different app)

[tomgreen]

Thank you all for your time and input, from what I have read it seems that it is impossible to efficiently achieve the result I wanted with Affinity Designer. As I said in my original post, this was a  vastly simplified version of what I needed to do and it simply is not feasible to be deleting thousands of paths or points individually.

As I also said in my original post,  @Pšenda, Expanding Strokes and Clipping Masks are not an option as the file is to be sent to a laser machine, you only have to switch to outline mode to see what the laser will see and realise how this does not work.

Sadly it seems that after 4 years Affinity Designer remains unusable for my purposes.

[Jowday]

On 9/8/2018 at 7:51 PM, tomgreen said:

I have been using graphics software for over 20 years, in all that time I have never found anything as unintuitive as AD. I have been patient and tried and tried but in 4 years of ownership I have not been able to complete a single project with this software. There is no shape builder tool, no knife tool and no vector eraser, so many basic things are missing, many of which have been requested since 2014.

Almost experiencing the same as you. I enjoy working in AD the most - until I have to do something just a little complicated. Today I had to jump between AD, Illustrator and even good old DrawPlus to get my work done. Done is an important term and milestone when you have clients... 

Waiting four years with no end in sight for basic tools is depressing. I understand the whole "building a suite from ground zero" thing - but basic tools are fundamental tools. Not something I can wait for for years. The development resources must be stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread... with so many variants of your software now (Mac, Windows, iOS). The head of Serif even had to make the tutorials for the Publisher beta "for there to be something".

So far reading the roadmap felt like reading 'Waiting for Godot" . 

[Pšenda]

On 9/16/2018 at 1:51 PM, tomgreen said:

what the laser will see

Halo tomgreen,

I apologize for the question - I'm ignorant in this specialization, but why is there a difference between what the laser and the printer see? Is not the problem that the laser machine incorrectly interprets source data, and can not do clipping?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

I apologize for the question - I'm ignorant in this specialization, but why is there a difference between what the laser and the printer see? Is not the problem that the laser machine incorrectly interprets source data, and can not do clipping?

As I understand it, the laser cuts or engraves paths in the substrate material, which usually is something considerably sturdier than paper. Think of it like cutting out a stencil with a knife -- you are not applying inks like with a printer, you are removing material.

[R C-R]

28 minutes ago, ErrkaPetti said:

@tomgreen seems to be one of many wining people here ...

Just FYI, in the English language "wining" is the verbal form of "wine," meaning to offer or consume wine, like in the phrase "wining and dining." I assume the word you wanted was "whining," but the complaint is a legitimate one that quite a few users have mentioned in various topics regarding the specialized needs for converting documents to something a laser cutter or engraver can use.

[Fixx]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

As I understand it, the laser cuts or engraves paths in the substrate material, which usually is something considerably sturdier than paper. Think of it like cutting out a stencil with a knife -- you are not applying inks like with a printer, you are removing material.

I think laser cutter follows paths, not b&w/coloured areas.

Maybe AD should be renamed GodotDraw 

[Pšenda]

Hi R C-R and Fixx, so far it did not answer my question :-)

tomgreen write "Expanding Strokes and Clipping Masks are not an option as the file is to be sent to a laser machine".

I do not understand, why the line from point A to point B is fine, but the exact same line from point A to point B, which is created by clipping longer line, is unusable.

[gdenby]

5 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Halo tomgreen,

I apologize for the question - I'm ignorant in this specialization, but why is there a difference between what the laser and the printer see? Is not the problem that the laser machine incorrectly interprets source data, and can not do clipping?

I too know very little about laser cutters. It appears some models have advanced RIP software, others are more rudimentary. It appears the OP needs large numbers of open vector curves. Evidently, the machine he uses does not interpret clipped shapes, and AD's booleans close vectors. I spent a few sessions working on ways to clear away unwanted closes, and found a routine that worked most of the time, but was always fairly tedious. But I was only clearing out several hundred fragments, and the OP talks about thousands. On can use AD for the task, but it is not very efficient.

As a BTW, the attached set of open curves cut into a simple rectangle took about 5 minutes. More complex groups of curves cut around by a curved form took well over 15.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

I do not understand, why the line from point A to point B is fine, but the exact same line from point A to point B, which is created by clipping longer line, is unusable.

As he said, his laser 'sees' the same thing as you would in Affinity Designer if it was in outline view mode. Try that with the clipping method you mentioned earlier & it should be obvious why that won't (pardon the pun) 'cut' it.

[firstdefence]

In affinity you cannot cut (knife cut) a stroke, you can resize a stroke length but you cannot use a shape to trim a stroke, you cannot use a vertical curve to trim a stroke or a series of strokes,  in fact you cannot do any boolean operations on a stroke. At the moment it's impossible to do this in Affinity.

The OP needs Strokes, single lines not small expanded strokes.

If you stroke a path you have a single line, if you expand that stroke you have a looped path with a fill, the laser will follow that loop, regardless how small it is, resulting in a poor laser mark.