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An "offset path" function as in big bad Illustrator would make my day


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I use Designer (and Illustrator, and even Inkscape) at times to make shapes that will be cut out on a laser cutter. 

If I want to make pieces that are sized correctly to press-fit into each other, it is necessary to make the piece that goes inside the hole very slightly larger than the piece that you originally cut out of the hole. If you don't do this, the piece you plug in fits too loosely, because the laser vaporizes a stroke about 0.007" wide. 

Illustrator's Offset Path function is perfect for this "kerf compensation" operation--as well as having many great uses for illustration, I am sure! With it, I can set an offset like +0.008" and then use the miter and join settings as needed to make sure that the new path matches the shape of the source path. 

I don't think there is a way to do this in Designer, so right now I have to detour into Inkscape or Illustrator, which sucks. 

This is my most-desired feature addition. 

In the meantime, if anyone has a trick for using existing Designer tools to produce a very precise amount of offset, I would love to hear about them. 

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I suspect most everyone (including the developers) recognizes the need for a well-implemented (frankly, that rules out Illustrator's) offset path function. But Affinity presently has some well known frequently discussed (including the developers) problems with results of its outline stroke command, which I'd assume is closely related. So my guess would be that there is a kind of shared foundational fix that has to be addressed before piling on related features and commands.

JET

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6 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

But Affinity presently has some well known frequently discussed (including the developers) problems with results of its outline stroke command, which I'd assume is closely related. So my guess would be that there is a kind of shared foundational fix that has to be addressed before piling on related features and commands. JET

Damn... How little likes and thanks may we throw a day on this forum? Only two? Already through my likes and thanks 'today'.

So than this way: Thanks! ;)

 

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On 7/12/2019 at 5:25 PM, Boldlinedesign said:

Many of us have been clamoring for this for a while now. I can totally see the need for it with laser settings - I use it all the time in t-shirt design. 

Same here.  For garment printing production work, offset paths is indispensible and also unique among the various popular vector programs.  Coreldraw has something that is kind of like it call contour.  It's much more involved and doesn't work well for the 1 second offset operation that I do constantly.

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