Ungrouping changing the appearance of artwork

Subpath

I downloaded your file, opened it in VS and exported it as PDF.

And then loaded that PDF into Coreldraw and Affinity Designer and ungrouped it, both worked

But the curious thing is, I loaded the PDF exported from VS
into VS as a test as well and then it works with ungrouping
The VS file did not work with ungrouping.

Win 10, VS 1.1.058

William Kansepa

@tudor Can you also attach the original Illustrator file?

William Kansepa

Sorry if my assumption of it being an Illustrator file is wrong...

b77

@William-Kansepa It's probably exported from a CAD app.

VectorStyler

@tudor The drawing contains groups using shape combine operations. These can be selected after 3 or 4 ungrouping steps.
Use Styles -> Expand Group first and then ungroup all.

How many Ungroup steps were used in Illustrator?

Ungrouping groups with shape combine operations will have similar results in other apps (where this feature is available).

One thing that I could do here is to stop Ungroup All at groups having combine operators. I added this to the backlog.

I also tried the PDF export and then import thing. And since exporting to PDF flattens the shape combine operations, the ungroup all worked as expected after importing.

Ingolf

@VectorStyler

Undoing the ungroup crashes VS on macOS. First time I tried I got a never ending spinner (using control-z), second time using toolbar the undo button stays depressed and I have to restart VS.

Ingolf

No, second time it came to life again.

VectorStyler

@Ingolf said in Ungrouping changing the appearance of artwork:

Undoing the ungroup crashes VS on macOS

Replicated here also.

tudor

@William-Kansepa said in Ungrouping changing the appearance of artwork:

@tudor Can you also attach the original Illustrator file?

The original was an EPS file downloaded from Getty Images. Here is a sample:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sr82epasubd7m0z/sample.ai?dl=0

tudor

@VectorStyler said in Ungrouping changing the appearance of artwork:

The drawing contains groups using shape combine operations. These can be selected after 3 or 4 ungrouping steps.
Use Styles -> Expand Group first and then ungroup all.
How many Ungroup steps were used in Illustrator?

So VS treats a "compound shape" (as Illustrator calls it) like a group. That explains it. It is unusual though, because all other applications I use have different commands for breaking apart compound shapes.

VectorStyler

@tudor Yes the Illustrator compound shapes are imported as groups (in the AI file format, they are groups).
I will try to find a solution for this.