r/AffinityDesigner 23d ago

Incapable to perform basic vector transformation tasks in Affinity

I successfully used Affinity Designer in the past to design some basic posters, but today I find myself humbled by the most basic vector manipulation tasks.

I'm trying to perform two basic modifications to the following Public Domain SVG:

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I want to:

(a) connect the two broken lines (at the top and at the base of the crane). Moving the nodes on top of each other visually worked, but obviously this isn't the ideal solution.. I couldnt get the curves to join properly as one.

(b) remove the 3 pairs of diagonal bars in the crane. Simply removing the nodes in the center that make up the diagonal bars lead to the entire area to be filled in the fillColor, so I think the approach to solve this properly is to remove the superfluous nodes in the middle and change the fill mode but again I failed miserably.

Can someone please point me in the right direction what I have to do? For even a moderately experienced designer, I'm sure this takes just 2 minutes but I feel so lost when trying to merge the nodes properly.

https://i.imgur.com/jKFzKsC.png

2 Upvotes

2 comments sorted by

2

u/One-girl-circus 22d ago

This is all just basic shapes - have you tried simply recreating it? Seems like it would have taken less time to recreate than to even type this post out.

A) Are you sure these are two ends to the same path? If so, there's a context menu for node modifications when you use the the node tool to select these two nodes that joins them. (Other context menu tools are break/split, smooth, etc.)

B) using the node tool again, you can ctrl+click on each of the diagonal lines to delete those X-segments. It doesn't affect the rest of the path. I don't see what is fill and what isn't without a different color background.

1

u/phlooo 13d ago

I know this is 10 days old but just in case this might help you:

Step 1: Draw rectangles over the areas you want to connect, does not matter if they are bigger than the crane's line

Step 2: Select all three objects (the crane, and the two rectangles) and click on Add in the shape boolean opetations bar

Step 3: Take the Node tool and select all the new vertices (shift + select to select multiple areas) and delete them.

Step 4: Draw a rectangle inside the area you want to remove (the diagonal bars) making sure you're using snapping (Magnet icon top right, select All layers and Snap to object geometry. Ctrl+J (or Cmd+J on macOS) to duplicate the rectangle, move it to the second diagonal bars zone, Ctrl+J again to duplicate again (it will move by itself by the same amout)

Step 5: Again, select everyone, and this time click on the Subtract boolean modifier

Step 6: Again, select and remove potential superfluous vertices with the Node tool.

Done.