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How to Use Compound Shapes in Affinity Designer

Vaseline August 19, 2024

Let’s say you have created a few shapes in your design. They are all separate, but part of the same structure. In that scenario, it would be a nightmare to modify each shape individually to produce a more complex design.

Composing shapes, on the other hand, will do wonders. You’re essentially creating one shape from all the shapes, meaning you can edit them as one in a non-destructive way. It allows you to merge, subtract, intersect, and more. Merging shapes allows you to design quickly and efficiently. Needless to say, it’s one of those Affinity Designer basics you need to have in your arsenal!

How to Use Compound Shapes in Affinity Designer

Let’s get to the good stuff! As you may remember from previous Affinity Designer tips and tricks tutorials, we were working on a design of a bear on top of an iceberg.

In this case, we want to change the shape of the iceberg the bear is standing on. Here’s how to do that with Affinity Designer compound shapes:

Frequently Asked Questions about Affinity Designer Compound Shapes

Let’s dive into some questions you might have about compound shapes in Affinity Designer.

Does the order of the shapes matter?

Yes! This is an important thing to note. The arrangement of the shape layers matters when it comes to editing a compound shape. This means that if you have a smaller shape under a larger one, you will not be able to edit it because the larger shape will cover it. What you can do is rearrange the layers or expand the bottom shape to bend it as you wish.

What are the possibilities for compound shapes?

When you expand the compound form, you will see a button to the left of the first form. Clicking on this will reveal the main options for the compound form: add, subtract, cross, and xor. Here is what each of these options means:

Add This allows you to merge all shapes into one shape with one outline.

Subtract helps you cut out the parts of a shape in relation to another shape.

Cutting takes the overlapping parts of the shapes and creates a new shape from those shared spaces.

Xor creates a new shape from non-overlapping parts of the shapes.

Please note that you can only use these options through the first form in the complex.

Can I use Affinity Designer compound shapes with other tools?

Yes! If you want to edit your design and do so while your shapes are being composed, you absolutely can. For example, if you want to adjust the contour effect, you can use the Contour Tool on your composed shape. No problem!

Check out our final result!

This is the end result of using Affinity Designer compound shapes to enhance the iceberg design in our artwork. As you can see, we’ve created some ripple effects on the water to add more visual interest and dimension. Cool, huh?

Now you can use these and other Affinity Designer basics to create a masterpiece!