Need help with cursive font in inkscape

[EmberMadeCo]

I need help with this font in Inkscape, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make all the letters flow together when cutting

[evansd2]

It has to do with using the path->union operation, but the fact that the letters are grouped when you convert to strokes means you have to either ungroup them or enter the group to select the paths for unioning.

Combining Overlapping Text Objects in Inkscape

It took me a few minutes to figure this out (again), so I figured I’d try to record exactly what I did in case anyone else ran across this problem. If this is too much over an overlap with another topic I didn’t find, I’ll delete it. First, I have a logo that is comprised of overlapping filled regions, what I see is this: [image] If I click the object, I see only part of it selected, so I click the other side, which gives me something that looks like this: [image] If I disable fill, ena…

Further reading:

https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=inkscape%20text%20union

[EmberMadeCo]

thank you thank you thank you!

[evansd2]

No problem, it’s a really common thing in inkscape to try to do path operations on non path objects (usually groups). The error messages are inconspicuous in the lower left of the screen, really easy to miss.

[EmberMadeCo]

it worked beautifully! I’ve done it before but completely forgot how to do it and my coffee hasn’t kicked in enough for me clearly!

[ca_worth]

WAIT… HOLD UP… there are ERROR messages in Inkscape!

hmmm gotta look for that.

thanks for the heads up. life might be better now.

[evansd2]

There are, usually. you can find them right now, go make two shapes and make one a group, then try to do a union on them. It’ll fail “silently”, but the lower left of your screen will say the following:

First, a clue about what you’ve got selected…

Since union only works on two objects that are either paths or shapes (which it silently automatically converts to a path before the union), that’s a sign that you’ve got problems brewing.

Then you attempt the union and get an error.

[ca_worth]

Geez… I never noticed that in using Inkscape for over 2 years!

[soniapentz]

I used the same kind of letters and I had to very carefully erase all the intersections between the letters to be able to cut them as a whole. I"m not sure if there is another way but thats how I did.

[evansd2]

@soniapentz that’s exactly what we are talking about. It’s all about understanding the path booleans and how to use them. This is an operation that takes literally one second to do with practice: select the words, then control-shift-G (ungroup), control-shift-plus (union).

There are edge cases where you might not want to ungroup but that’s really specific so I won’t get into it here beyond to say “if you don’t know why you might not want to ungroup things in your specific design, then don’t worry about it for now”.