From the course: Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Using the Shape Builder tool

Using the Shape Builder tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Start my 1-month free trial

Using the Shape Builder tool

In this exercise I'm going to show you how to join paths together using the new Shape Builder tool here inside of Illustrator CS5. I've saved my progress as First tentative blobs.ai found inside the 06_transform folder. And notice that I have two blue shapes here at work inside my Drawing layer. I am going to select both of them by marqueeing over them using my Black Arrow tool. This is very important because the Shape Builder tool only works on selected paths inside of your illustration. Then drop down to the Shape Builder tool which you can also get by pressing Shift+M. Notice as you hover over your paths, Illustrator highlights the areas of intersection. So in other words in the case of our two paths we have the central area where the paths overlap each other. Then we have these independent areas where the paths don't overlap on the left-hand side and the right-hand side. What you do with this tool is you drag over the areas that you want to combine. For example, if I drag over the…

Contents