Hi Britt, here is a tip that saves me so many hours and frustration, I don’t even want to think about all the time I wasted doing this manually, no knowing there was a better way.
When designing a glyph that derives from another glyph, it’s best to use components to build the new glyph. For example, ä (adieresis) can be build from a and dieresiscomb. But what to do if simple stacking does not work? ʑ (zcurl) is like a z, but its outline seamlessly flows into a curl at the end. It’s difficult/impossible to use components in this case.
Then I discovered Mask to Master, a script from the Freemix collection by @TimAhrens. (Installable from the Plugin Manager → Scripts.) Mask to Master aligns the selected nodes to the background. One click, or even better, one shortcut:
You can assign a shortcut in the Glyphs preferences → Shortcuts → Mask to Master. I have set the shortcut to Command-K since I use it all the time.