Street Maps Etc ADe 1.7 (split)

[Aongus Collins]

(split from this announcement post)

Thanks for a great update.
As a  quick test, I played with the appearance panel. Specifically, I tried drawing a  basic street map, as you might see in a leaflet for a local business. 
Using the new multiple strokes capability, it’s  possible to do to such work quickly Affinity Designer. 
First I drew the roads using a heavy dark stroke. Then in the appearance panel, I added a second stroke, in a lighter colour, above the first stroke. 
That produced the effect of parallel lines, with a fill in between.
The technique will work only if another new feature in 1.7 is used: when using the pen tool, the "Add new curves to selected object object" button on the context toolbar must be selected.  Then the lines blend together.
The second stage in this exercise was to duplicate the artboard containing all the elements. On the second the strokes have brush styles to give a more hand-drawn style.
This is a quick, very rough test, and I’m looking forward to exploring the latest Affinity advances in more depth!
 

[toth]

11 hours ago, Aongus Collins said:

Thanks for a great update.
As a  quick test, I played with the appearance panel. Specifically, I tried drawing a  basic street map, as you might see in a leaflet for a local business. 
Using the new multiple strokes capability, it’s  possible to do to such work quickly Affinity Designer. 
First I drew the roads using a heavy dark stroke. Then in the appearance panel, I added a second stroke, in a lighter colour, above the first stroke. 
That produced the effect of parallel lines, with a fill in between.
The technique will work only if another new feature in 1.7 is used: when using the pen tool, the "Add new curves to selected object object" button on the context toolbar must be selected.  Then the lines blend together.
The second stage in this exercise was to duplicate the artboard containing all the elements. On the second the strokes have brush styles to give a more hand-drawn style.
This is a quick, very rough test, and I’m looking forward to exploring the latest Affinity advances in more depth!
 

THANK YOU! I've been struggling with this exact problem, getting parallel, but also intersecting lines. Awesome! I tried drawing letters with two strokes enabled, and now it's easy as a breeze..!

 

EDIT: PS, I also just discovered you can draw open ended roads by setting one stroke to "butt cap" and the other to "square cap"

[bndesigner]

Looks good! Here is a screenshot with settings for reference on the parallel lines.

[maksimon]

In the top stroke you need to set the blend mode to "delete" - then it will be just perfect. Thanks for the idea).

[Michail]

On 6/5/2019 at 10:52 PM, Aongus Collins said:

First I drew the roads using a heavy dark stroke. Then in the appearance panel, I added a second stroke, in a lighter colour, above the first stroke. 
That produced the effect of parallel lines, with a fill in between.
The technique will work only if another new feature in 1.7 is used: when using the pen tool, the "Add new curves to selected object object" button on the context toolbar must be selected.  Then the lines blend together.

This is a wonderful and efficient technique for drawing road maps. And the best thing about it: every single street can be flexibly adapted!
But unfortunately it is not possible to create streets of different widths in this way.

[NilsFinken]

8 hours ago, Michail said:

This is a wonderful and efficient technique for drawing road maps. And the best thing about it: every single street can be flexibly adapted!
But unfortunately it is not possible to create streets of different widths in this way.

Michail,

Indeed you can, at least when using different layers for different types of strokes:

[Aongus Collins]

Nils, Michail,

Yes, using layers can resolve the issue of varying road widths.

Here’s another example, using open curves. As toth explained in an earlier post, when curves are open you can achieve a perfect illusion of 2 parallel lines. In the Appearance Panel the lower stroke must have a Butt Cap, and the top stroke a Square Cap. 

In this example the thinner strokes are on on a separate, upper layer. Although the roads don’t really join, they look as if they do... due to the way the uppe curves have been placed to cover the borders of the underlying curves.

[Michail]

14 hours ago, Aongus Collins said:

Yes, using layers can resolve the issue of varying road widths.
Here’s another example, using open curves. As toth explained in an earlier post, when curves are open you can achieve a perfect illusion of 2 parallel lines. In the Appearance Panel the lower stroke must have a Butt Cap, and the top stroke a Square Cap.
In this example the thinner strokes are on on a separate, upper layer. Although the roads don’t really join, they look as if they do... due to the way the uppe curves have been placed to cover the borders of the underlying curves.

Can you explain the thin lines (above) in more detail (step by step)?

1. Have you drawn the thin road in the same way as the wide roads ()? Unfortunately you can't see that.
2. Why did you create a C-level? (and not a normal one)?
3. Probably the whole thing doesn't work in "delete" mixed mode.

[Aongus Collins]

2 hours ago, Michail said:

Can you explain the thin lines (above) in more detail (step by step)?

 1. Have you drawn the thin road in the same way as the wide roads ()? Unfortunately you can't see that.
2. Why did you create a C-level? (and not a normal one)?
3. Probably the whole thing doesn't work in "delete" mixed mode.

Michail,

Here is a screenshot showing the process in more detail. I’ve also uploaded the file.

For consistency, each set of roads is now on a layer level, not a C-level (that was an oversight).

The lines are simple open curves, no boolean or compound operations were involved.

I hope this is clearer!

Road Map.afdesign

[Michail]

1 hour ago, Aongus Collins said:

Here is a screenshot showing the process in more detail. I’ve also uploaded the file.
For consistency, each set of roads is now on a layer level, not a C-level (that was an oversight).
The lines are simple open curves, no boolean or compound operations were involved.

Thank you for your trouble!

I couldn't see that the narrow road was interrupted. This method would be a bit cumbersome in practice (especially with thin edges), especially since there is no catch mechanism for it. You could draw the lines through and calculate with a mix mode (e.g. "Expose colors"). But this only works with black and white.

Maybe I (or someone else) will find another solution. Until then I have to use my proven method for different street widths (see attached file).

Straßen.afdesign

[Aongus Collins]

Thanks!

Your method works very well. Using a dashed stroke for a railroad is a great idea.

[R C-R]

On 6/11/2019 at 2:31 PM, Aongus Collins said:

Yes, using layers can resolve the issue of varying road widths.

Thank you very much for sharing this technique! I doubt I would have ever figured out on my own how the new multiple stroke & "Add new curves to selected object object" features could be combined to do things like this. 

[Catshill]

I've been looking at this technique of two strokes for drawing roads as currently, I've been using the alternative method of 

Drawing a line with a white strike colour > Using an effect (Outline black)  > Select all lines > Layer > Expand Stroke > Boolean Add

This works but is more work than the method described in this thread and it also does not allow you to have uncapped (open ended) roads.

However I cannot work out how to intersect two existing lines. In other words, say you draw a line but forget to use the "Add new curves to selected object object" when adding the second line. I have tried selecting the two lines and using Layer >  Expand stroke > Add but this crashes ADe so no luck there.

 

Ref 

 

[pbasdf]

1 hour ago, Catshill said:

However I cannot work out how to intersect two existing lines. In other words, say you draw a line but forget to use the "Add new curves to selected object object" when adding the second line. I have tried selecting the two lines and using Layer >  Expand stroke > Add but this crashes ADe so no luck there.

Does Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves do what you require?

[Catshill]

15 hours ago, pbasdf said:

Does Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves do what you require?

Perfect  - Thank you for this.

[Catshill]

On 5/20/2022 at 5:59 PM, pbasdf said:

Does Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves do what you require?

Except that this does not work when you are joining roads that have different widths 😞

 

 

So I am back to "gluing" little white rectangles over the joins!

 

 

[Catshill]

Revisiting this topic using V2.

Unfortunately Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves still doesn't work with two different sized lines...

As you can see it it makes both lines the same ...

[Catshill]

I am wondering if the new shape builder or knife tool could be used to do this?

[Old Bruce]

Maybe I am missing something but my mind says of course they are the same width, you have turned them into only one line. You will need to to expand the stroke first and then add those.

[Catshill]

On 11/21/2022 at 5:13 PM, Old Bruce said:

Maybe I am missing something but my mind says of course they are the same width, you have turned them into only one line. You will need to to expand the stroke first and then add those.

That makes sense. I will investigate. At the moment I am working with two different ways of creating roads and I am getting bogged down with the number of variables. I need to work out which method makes most sense for joining roads of different thicknesses. 

[Catshill]

Problem solved...