From the course: Illustrator: Drawing without the Pen Tool

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Why the Shape Builder tool was created

Why the Shape Builder tool was created - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator: Drawing without the Pen Tool

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Why the Shape Builder tool was created

Up until this point we discuss two main ways to think about building artwork inside of Illustrator. The first one is using a set of functions called Pathfinder. We discussed different things like shape modes, compound shapes and also Pathfinder functions themselves. Then we discussed this world of Live Paint. Live Paint allows us to look at our art work visually. We can lay down our path anywhere that we want, but we can decide to actually fill those paths or apply attributes like strokes based on how we see them on the screen. In this chapter, we're going to focus on a third way to build artwork inside of Illustrator using a new feature, it's actually a new tool that was added in Illustrator CS5. It's called the Shape Builder tool. But before we discuss the tool itself which by the way it's found right here inside the Tools panel the Shape Builder tool. Keyboard shortcut for that is Shift+M. Don't ask me why, but that's I guess one that was available. So the question really is why…

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