Expand stroke still sucks

[AdrianB]

1 hour ago, HannaCecilia said:

Hi Adrian. I have the exact same issue. Except - my ancient CS4 is not working anymore on High Sierra. Or you have any tips? I am really stuck with the mad Adobe prices .

Sorry, no specific advice for CS4. I have CS5 and thankfully it still works on High Sierra for me. I had to do some java-related voodoo to get it going, but it works mostly now. 

[Oval]

3 hours ago, HannaCecilia said:

Why is the 'expand stroke' not working with any brush strokes?   […]      Please help

Because those consist of bitmaps and Affinity apps still have no vectorizer.

You could export your work/or only the brush strokes (high-resolution), use a different app to vectorize the strokes and then reimport to AD or finish your work in the other app.

BTW: Welcome here in the forum.

3 hours ago, HannaCecilia said:

the mad Adobe prices

mean less workarounds, which saves a lot of time, money and nerves

[AdrianB]

The 1.8 beta of Designer for Mac is now released including the long awaited ”Improved the results of Expand Stroke”, yay!

[Oval]

And still a lot work for the users :-(

[MEB]

Hi Oval,
Do you mind attaching the corresponding afdesign file please? Thank you.

[tytus 01UNIT]

@MEB Expand stroke still not working... This is first time when I'm scared that I can't provide quality project to my client because of affinity. Don't get me wrong I love affinity, but this is HUGE problem. I'm forced to LEARN how to NOT use stroke in vector design... because on the end when I expand it it just messes up my design... this is very bad error. I don't see any other priority that can be more important then something that messes up final project on export. I can't export logos with strokes...

[MEB]

Hi tytus 01UNIT,
If you are using the latest Designer 1.8 Beta do you mind attaching the file with the object that's giving you trouble when you expand it for us to check please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private. Thanks.

[tytus 01UNIT]

On 2/5/2020 at 11:40 PM, MEB said:

Hi tytus 01UNIT,
If you are using the latest Designer 1.8 Beta do you mind attaching the file with the object that's giving you trouble when you expand it for us to check please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private. Thanks.

Hi, Thank you for info. I didn't know about this possibility. I'm checking 1.8 beta right now. Thanks! I will let you know.

[tytus 01UNIT]

On 2/5/2020 at 11:40 PM, MEB said:

Hi tytus 01UNIT,
If you are using the latest Designer 1.8 Beta do you mind attaching the file with the object that's giving you trouble when you expand it for us to check please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the file private. Thanks.

@MEB Yep, there is still Expand Stroke problem. I did the same shape in both programs. It seams that expand stroke is ok when there the shape is simple and has nice rounded corners. If I randomly band it it has those "moves".

[MEB]

Hi tytus 01UNIT,
Thanks for your feedback. Do you mind attaching the afdesign file shown in the screenshots above please (with the original path before the expand operation). Thanks.

[tytus 01UNIT]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

Hi tytus 01UNIT,
Thanks for your feedback. Do you mind attaching the afdesign file shown in the screenshots above please (with the original path before the expand operation). Thanks.

Sure, I had to recreated it, but it is similar.

t.afdesign

[el_reverend]

I've been reading pages of "Expand Stroke does not work" and in hope that someone had a decent solution. My journey started because I can't get even reasonable results for an export to svg, so I thought I'd 'simply outline the stroke' and then export. Boy was I wrong.

The sharp lines (a curve) is the original and the rounded one an arbitrary 'guess' from the Expand Stroke "command".  Some things should be noted, the points are not straight nor equal.

I should say to accomplish my task (export to SVG) I exported to JPG (which worked great!), used an online tool, and within 25sec I had completed that tasking downloaded an identical svg file - sadly not within Designer. I know there are a lot of things in software that can (and will) go wrong, but maybe we done need 'personas' but properly functioning commands?

Just for giggles I did upload an afdesign file. Let's just hope it was user error (me) and I don't know how to use Designer.

project_Line_test.afdesign

[Alfred]

12 hours ago, el_reverend said:

The sharp lines (a curve) is the original and the rounded one an arbitrary 'guess' from the Expand Stroke "command".

How did you achieve those sharp lines with smooth nodes?

[MEB]

Hi @el_reverend,
On the original line (before expanded), select all the middle nodes (exclude the start and end nodes) then click the Sharp button in the Convert section of the context toolbar with the Node Tool selected. This will fix the issue by converting them to sharp nodes as they should be.

 

19 minutes ago, Alfred said:

How did you achieve those sharp lines with smooth nodes?

By setting the mitre to 100 and adjusting the handles so they overlap the node (that's why some corners are crooked).

[el_reverend]

Hey @MEB thanks for pointing this out. And now I have to go completely novice here and ask “sharp button”? What how? 

the Reasone the miter is set to high is based on the various things I’ve read in this and various other posts about the expand stroke. Originally it was set to 4. (For the expand stroke) however that produced the same result.

And what I find odd is that when creating a line with the pen tool that I have to set nodes to be “sharp” when the bezier curve already defines it as such. Or again a user error? Not something I remember ever having to do in other vector programs. Is this a thing in Designer? 
Thanks for the feedback! 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, el_reverend said:

And now I have to go completely novice here and ask “sharp button”?

With the Node Tool active, look at the Context toolbar. You should see buttons for converting the selected nodes to ‘Sharp’, ‘Smooth’, or ‘Smart’.

1 hour ago, el_reverend said:

And what I find odd is that when creating a line with the pen tool that I have to set nodes to be “sharp” when the bezier curve already defines it as such.

When drawing with the Pen Tool using the default ‘Pen Mode’, the nodes will be sharp if you just click but smooth if you click and drag.

[el_reverend]

Thanks @Alfred for the explanation. As for the pen tool I work with bazar curves a lot. Hence Im a bit astonished at this.

@MEBBut this does not solve the problem. What is does do is change the path to be perfectly straight, not with the minute variations I built in, which is why the edges look a little 'off'. I dont want those to be perfectly straight. 

When following that tip (and this does work, so thank you) it changes the outcome. Should it not be design simply outline the path as is? What critical element am I missing here?

[MEB]

If you want the corners a bit off, add two nodes near the end corner (just click over the path to add them) and drag them a bit (including the end corner) or drag just the end corner keeping the other two nodes in place depending how you want to distort the corner.

[el_reverend]

@MEBThanks for the tip. This seems to be an extra unnecessary step to me, doesn't it? The nodes already have a 'mathematical' method of being a bit off. Why the need to add another one? I might answer my own question here in that if the representation of said line is not accurate the conversion would make it so, but there by change the appearance. In either case it seems a necessary step in Designer... Hope they get to squash this oddity.