Node editing question

[Firehog (Brad Ouellette)]

I bought a file of a small box but I want to separate all the pieces so I can cut them individually in case one is bad , but all the pieces share common sides and have small tabs as I circled in red.I managed to pull part of the lid away as seen I am trying to bridge all the gaps in node editing but have not been successful. I have watched You Tube videos but don’t get it. working on a Macbook , help please

[berainlb (PY)]

What is the complication you experience when trying to do this?

Normally while in node edit mode you’d need to move one node on top of the one you’re trying to snap to and the ends will be joined.

[mfl_jr (Mike Leimer)]

Hey,

Not sure from the post exactly what it is that you see as results when you try to edit the nodes, so I’m going to share a couple of the things that tripped me up at first and maybe one of those will help. If not, let us know what you actually see when you try to edit and we’ll go from there.

Can’t tell from your picture but I believe you will have to make sure that none of the shapes you want to edit are Grouped, so select the shape and then click the “Ungroup” icon up top.

Then, again can’t tell from the picture but you can only edit paths, so select something and then go to Edit|Convert to Path.

When you select the ‘Edit Nodes’ button then you ought to see little square dots wherever there is a node that you can manipulate, but I’m sure you saw that in the youtube part.

If the path thing is the issue then you’ll want to select everything and do the conversion.

Good luck,
Mike

[Firehog (Brad Ouellette)]

Thank you everyone, great tips , I managed a work around but am not sure how I accomplished it . I found on some of them the “ marching ants were going in two directions, CW /CCW , when I zoomed in I saw the lines were not properly matched so I had to delete backwards and rejoin them correctly. I will be more detailed on the next question as I am sure this is not over

[berainlb (PY)]

You were probably dealing with disjointed line segments. I wrote a couple of posts that may interest you on this.

Flashing objects

What’s happening is that you have the same marching ants effect that you get whenever you select an object. However, what’s different about the shimmering objects is that they’re actually made up of a whole lot of tiny lines that are disjointed. This plus the marching ants is giving it that flashing appearance.

Having trouble with closing shapes

Close shape and close shape with tolerance are 2 variations on the same core function. Close shape only works on a very specific and narrow condition where you have a nearly closed shape that’s disconnected only at one joint. Meaning that all other nodes between segments of the shape are full joined. As long as the single unjoined pair of nodes are within overlap tolerance, the “close shape” function will join the nodes and close the shape. The only fundamental difference with close shape with …