From the course: Illustrator CS5 Essential Training

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Using the Shape Builder tool

Using the Shape Builder tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator CS5 Essential Training

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Using the Shape Builder tool

One of the new tools that was added to Illustrator CS5 is something called the Shape Builder tool. You'll find that here inside of the Tools panel and the keyboard shortcut for it is Shift+M. You know, over the years Adobe has noticed that many people struggle with building artwork inside of Illustrator. Unfortunately, many people struggle with the Pen tool not realizing that it can be far more efficient to build shapes using Pathfinders like we've been discussing so far. However, admittedly, even if you take a look at the Pathfinder panel itself and I will go to the Window menu here just to open it up, you will note that the Pathfinder panel has many options inside of it and it can be sometimes difficult to understand which button to click at what time. So while working at Pathfinders can be very helpful inside Illustrator, Adobe notice that there is a lot of trial and error, meaning that people would select some artwork try one Pathfinder function, realize no, that wasn't it, maybe…

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