How to "weld" items belonging to the same vector

[sullen valve]

Hey everyone, is it possible to convert these little squares into bigger chunks (like "welding" the little squares)? It's all a single vector, so I can't just use "union". Thanks!

[fresh thunder]

Hey @sullen valve ! like you want all of it to be one thing? Im not sure what you mean by that exactly since it is technicallly all one thing already

If you just wanna get rid of the "lines" in between the squares, you could delete the points eg this one

[sullen valve]

Thanks @fresh thunder , yes that's the idea. Unfortunately removing points messes up the squares (they disappear). E.g. I removed one point and ended up with this.

I wouldn't care too much about the little squares but the svg export looks bad in the browser. It looks like there are thin lines in the design when infact there are none. This is how the svg looks in a webpage.

If anyone wants to take a look, I published this test file: https://www.figma.com/design/2afVyaqYUAH1kfdiD2KqSY/Help?node-id=0-1&t=9gdWVAuNhmt1DxFF-1

Just found out that the svg won't exhibit those thin lines if I add the shape-rendering="crispEdges" attribute to the <svg> tag, so I would say problem solved.

But I would still like to know how to handle situations like this in Figma. Was hoping to find about a trick or something. 😀 Still am! 🤞

[fresh thunder]

After this, try like cutting the whole thing and pasting it back into the figma file

But ill try that out soon also when i get to my laptop

[fresh thunder]

not sure if this is the best waay to do it, but i kinda just deleted some points and sides of it and restructured it to get the inverse of it and then i just substracted that from a full rectangle

[sullen valve]

interesting approach, thanks! 👌

[vague gulch]

@sullen valve I've seen this happen when fill-ing an object and then adding/deleting/merging extra points after, so some things are being confusingly inverted. Luckily cause it's not a large area and is a simple shape, you can manually fix it.

• Flatten (just in case)
• Remove the fill
• Add points along the lines (when using pen tool, it should automatically let you add a midway point)
• Then delete those points
• Do this for all the points where there is a line you want to get rid of
• Add Fill again and it should be 1 fill, instead of some invisible and some filled.

I'm not able to access your file but recreated what I mean here, hope it helps

[fresh thunder]

yeah i was trying to do it this way at first as well, the reason why i ended up not doing that is because of these parts

where with the way you are doing it here / i was doing it originallly, the middle empty part got filled also

so there has to be a substraction somewhere

[vague gulch]

@fresh thunder Oh yhhh my bad, I should of looked at the whole pattern. Just seen this issue a bunch of times so jumped the gun

[fresh thunder]

yeah it is definitely annoying how it is just not fill, i have had that a bunch also

[vague gulch]

@fresh thunder just had another look and found this way without mask. We can do the same as before of removing the points etc.. But to split the vector where those holes are, then duplicate the whole thing - remove the corner vertex, then flatten again.

This feels disgusting and I wouldn't recommend this way as I def prefer the mask way you did, the ease of use for editing in future / just having to change the colour in one place and it being actually useful for other things in future, outweighs other solutions.

But I thought it was funny cause essentially this solution to OPs problem, is to actually use that same "issue" to resolve it lol

[fresh thunder]

Yeah removing can happen there also. I actually also just used substract + flattening, and i didnt use masking either!

[vague gulch]

Oh I didn't mean Mask as the tool, but the masking technique of subtracting. I meant I prefer your way as you can just edit that mask in future and subtract once, rather than the longer process of having to detach each hole and re-connect in my way

[fresh thunder]

Ah okay yeah makes sense!😄