At least it shows you the shapes without having to switch the display mode.If you plan to attend Supercon or some other hacker conference, know that you’re going to get a badge with a SAO (Simple Add-On) connector, a 4-pin or 6-pin connector that you can plug an addon board onto. It also helps adding a stroke to your design when you have difference/ union issues. By ticking the option and turning on the ‘show path outline’ in the top row of icons, Inkscape will add red ‘half arrow’ pointing the direction the nodes are oriented. Inkscape’s Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P) you can check “Show path direction on outlines” in the Tools -> Node section. Sadly Inkscape does show the orientation of the nodes only when you know where to find it. The sequence (clockwise or counter-clockwise) of these nodes is the orientation. These nodes define the position in relation to it’s neighbors and the angle the two are connected by. What’s vector orientation anyway? Vector shapes are a sequence of nodes – those little circles and squares when you switch to the node tool. The same problem shows in Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw (just to mention the tools I am frequently using).

This is not a unique problem to Inkscape. Most likely the issue is a different orientation of those two objects. Even though the vector shapes show both elements as one object but in the same fill colour. A lot of the time this is due to vector orientation.

You want to cut a shape out of your design and it’s just not showing as cut out.

All of a sudden the substract won’t work. Vector Orientation – understanding a frequent problem Inkscape TutorialĪ very common question on social media groups for vector art are problems with difference and union.

Inkscape stroke to path not working