206 Creating Intertwining Objects

- This effect where it appears that the two objects are intertwined always confounded me. Like, this part of the pink object is above that one, but it's below that one. How on Earth can you do that in InDesign? Well, I saw how my friend Mike Rankin did it and it was so easy that I just needed to show you. Mike is the author of another title here on the online training library called InDesign FX. And you definitely want to check that out. But let me show how this is done. I'm going to scroll down in this document so you can see that I have the same objects but this time not intertwined.

One is just sitting on top of the other. Now obviously I could select this object go to the Object menu and then choose from the Arrange sub-menu. I could choose Send to Back or move to front but I cannot say move part of it below the other. It's all or nothing right? So instead I need to use a trick. And the trick is to use a second object. Here, let me show you. After I select this object, the black one in the background, I copy it to the clipboard. I'll just press Command-C, or Control-C on Windows.

Then I switch to the Frame Tool. Now you can just press the "f" key on your keyboard but I'm going to select it here in the Tool panel. Then I'm going to draw out a frame where I want them to intersect. I simply drag out a rectangle, let go of the mouse button and now I have the frame on the page. Finally I'm going to go the Edit menu and I'm going to choose not Paste, but Paste Into. When you use Past Into, and the frame that your pasting into is in the same area as the object that you copied, it pastes it with the exact same location.

It pin registers it. So look at that. The duplicate that I pasted into the frame, covers up the pink object and the result is that it appears that the objects are intertwined. Here let's do one more. I'm going to go to the next page in my document and I want to interlock these two O's. But before I do that, I'm going to make a copy of this object, you know just in case I mess something up. So I'll choose the selection tool and then I'll hold down the Option, or Alt key, and I'll drag this object down.

That's just a little backup. I'll go back up here and choose that text frame and I'm going to convert this into Outlines by going to the Type menu and choosing Create Outlines. When I convert text to paths, what I get is one big complicated, compound path and I can pull that apart into separate paths by going to the Object menu, choosing the Paths sub-menu and then choose Release Compound Path. So of course now I have a bunch of separate paths but the counters inside the B and the two O's aren't holes anymore.

It's just a bunch of paths. But that's okay, I can fix that. Let's go up to the Window menu, choose the Object & Layout sub-menu and then choose Pathfinder Now I'm going to select these two objects here, in this O and then I'm going to click on the Subtract button inside the Pathfinder panel. That knocks a hole in the one underneath. Let's go ahead and do the next one. And then I'll take care of the B. Just by dragging over those, so I select all three of those objects and then clicking Subtract. There we go, looks much better.

Now let's go ahead and co-mingle those O's. I'm going to select both of these objects, over here and I'm simply going to drag these over to the left. I'm holding down the Shift key to constrain them horizontally. Now I'll deselect that, select this O and change its color so we can see it better. Let's make it pink. Great, now we're ready for the trick again. I'm going to select the object in the background, the black O, and copy it to the clipboard with Command-C or Control-C on Windows. Then I'll press the "f" key to switch to the Frame Tool and I'll drag out a little area where I want them to intersect.

If you don't get the frame exactly where you want it, remember that you can hold down the Spacebar which let's you move the frame while you're dragging it. Here the Spacebar is held down, now I let go of the Spacebar and I can continue to drag. Let go of the mouse button, and I have the frame. Now all I need to do is go to the Edit menu, and choose Paste Into. Boom, it's done. And even better, these are all still separate objects right? So that means I can go back to my Selection Tool, click on the pink O, and then rotate it, or transform it in some other way.

And you'll see that it still looks like the two O's are intertwined. Now of course, ultimately, we still have a bunch of separate objects. So if this object gets moved, uh, that doesn't look good. So let me undo that, with Command-Z, or Control-Z on Windows and now I'm going to select all of these objects then go to the Object menu, and choose Group. There we go. Now we get the effect we want and it won't get messed up if we later move it around.