Problem with Union Operation

[Susan G.]

You may recall that I had a problem with the difference operation a month or so ago and Angel and Rhetta helped me! Now I have a problem with the union operation. I have been working on this problem all day.

I have attached a file that has a chain of flowers -- the flowers overlap one another, overlap the frame or overlap both. I am trying to weld the frame and the chain together so I can cut out a silhouette of the chain of flowers. In other words, I want the negative space between the flowers and the frame to be cut away, not the flowers themselves. (I plan to place the welded design over a different color paper and add a pearl in the center of each flower.) So far I have done the following:

--Ungrouped the objects
--Magnified the chain to 1600 to see if I had any open paths.
--Checked to see if I had any overlapping nodes among the petals.

Also, I made the square design by using the rectangle tool, duplicating the rectangle in a different color on top of the original rectangle, reducing the size of the copy, and then performing the difference operation to create the square "hole" in the center. I got this technique from two YouTube videos so I don't think this is my problem.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Susan

[Tyler]

I hope this is what you needed. If not, I will be back sometime tomorrow or someone else can add to it. I just selected all the petals and ctrl+shift+plus to union them and then selected the unioned flowers and the frame and ctrl+shift+minus to take away the flowers for the silhouette.

[Susan G.]

Hey Tyler, thanks for such a quick reply. I want to keep the flowers and cut out the space between the flowers and the frame -- what I call the negative space. But your advice has given me the direction I need. I didn't think of using the union operation for the petals first. I'll try this tomorrow when I am thinking clearer! Thanks again.

[Suzan]

I have found sometimes if I try to union to many things at once I may have something off kilter a bit. So I do it in smaller groups. I know it can be hard to miss something to easy. Like this weekend I had something I had to cut and I actually had nodes stacked on top of each other perfect. It drove me crazy. Lucky for me it was only where the sharp corners of a letter met like a capital M. It took me an hour to find everything out.

[LisaH]

Hey Susan,

Is this more like what you are looking for?

[Susan G.]

Lisa --

It is exactly what I am trying to do! How did you do it? And thanks for helping me.

[LisaH]

I actually did it in MTC but the same principals will work in Inkscape.(I'm not as comfortable with that program -yet- as MTC)

If I remember correctly - I did a weld / union of all of the flowers first. Then did a square and a marginally smaller square and did a join. Put this square around the outside of the flowers and welded/unioned those two together. Did the same thing with the inner square - 2 squares, join then weld to inside of flowers.

At least I think that's what I did

[Susan G.]

New related problem! I go to weld/union the flowers per Lisa's suggestions and I find that MY weld leaves out lines of the petals where I did a difference operation prior to welding! I went back and redid all of the differences getting one petal to overlap another and the next weld did the same thing. I have attached a file showing the "after the weld/difference and union" on the left and the "before the weld/difference operation only" on the right. Can anyone explain why this is happening?

[Retta]

Susan your line is if I can say - another weld option. It is a stroke and not an object. If you want your flowers a little wider - like the stroke makes it. Remove the stroke, got to path outset and you will have a slightly wider flower. Than do it to your frames. Then do the union. To remove the stroke - go to the color of the strock at the bottom of the page, right click and choose remove stroke. You have to have that item selected at the time.

[Susan G.]

Retta --

Thank you for your advice. I tried it and it gave me a true weld/silhouette. However, when I went to remove the stroke, it all disappeared. But that's okay, I'll just leave out that last step!

I have been working on this design all day and learning quite a bit. When I finally tried to cut out the design, I realized it was too detailed (one lesson) so I simplified it and am now on version 50

Thanks again to you and the others who helped me with this.

[Retta]

Susan - all you have to do is fill the design, before removing the stroke. It will work then, and I'm glad I could help. I know people helped me too.