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Lesson Info

Pathfinder Tool

there's a whole set of tools called Pathfinders. So for me, when I'm drawing again, I can't necessarily see what I need to and get it. Come out my hand and be right, whether it's with a stylised or mouse or anything or even a pencil. I'm just terrible at that. I can see in my head I know what I want. I could describe it, but I can't actually get that to work. But what I can do is I see a lot of stuff in shapes, kind of like I just did here, where traced on top of that item. But I might have something else where I just see a shape and draw it on top of it. So a lot of times when I'm thinking okay, I need a you know, a moon or whatever A crescent moon. Well, to me, that's two circles overlapped, and it's kind of the cut out that's left behind. So for me, I'm always, always thinking in shapes, so I'm just going to create a couple simple shapes I don't think I have Now. I'm gonna go ahead and start with just the rectangle, and I'm going to use what's called the Pathfinder tool. And the Pat...

hfinder tool actually has just a ton of different shaped building capabilities built in. Right. So what I might do is start with something like a rectangle, and I'm gonna go ahead and fill it with a color. Let's fill with red today I'm gonna actually switch those. And I don't want this to be, ah, white stroke That might come in a confusion caused confusion when I overlap them or something. So I'm gonna say none, right? So I'm gonna go ahead and just create my rectangle, and then I'm going to go ahead and create another shape as well, and I'm going to create an ellipse, and I'm going to use smart guides. I can see where I'm in the center of each writes. I know that I'm in the center there, and I'm just gonna go ahead and hold down my shift key to constrain proportions and hold on the option key. So draws from the centre outwards until I get that lined up right, Or I might just draw from the corner and hold on the shift key. And I can see when things airline Oppa's well, you know, they didn't give me my center smart guide. It should have some days, it doesn't. And I was gonna move this up till my center. Hopefully, you can see them, see if I can get zoomed in on it. See how it shows me what I'm left in right center. And when I'm centered on this line as well. So now I know that circle is sitting right on top of that rectangle. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that. I'm gonna give us a different color to certain kind of see, Let's actually give Phil a different color. I just wouldn't kind of see those different different items that are there. So I'm gonna take those two and I want to create a compound shape out of that, and I'm going to use the Pathfinder tool for that soap under the window menu. I come down to Pathfinder if it's not already open, and I'm going to drag it over here, and I have just all these little different icons. Nice thing is, I've got my tool tips turned on, so I'm gonna roll over him, and it tells me what the name of it is and kind of what it does. Sometimes it's a little confusing. I call this the Hunt and Peck Tool. Right. So I'm just gonna put something on there, I'm gonna run it. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to use the magic, undo command and make everything better. Right? So I'm gonna select any shapes that I want to start using the Pathfinder tool on. So I just dragged across both of those and I'm gonna go to this 1st 1 and this 1st 1 says Unite. So let's try that and see what happens. Well, it unites them. It made one complete shape, so that's great. If I wanted that rounded now, I could have done what we did before we took the rectangle tool. And we used the anchor point tool and we pulled on that and were able to pull it up into this nice arcas. Well, but maybe it wasn't the right angle that I wanted. I can always create two shapes and do the unite and make them into one shape like that. So now I have kind of this door that's here, right? And so I'm going to create another shape, and I'm going to create a star and I'm just gonna hold down the shift key. So get nice star shape here, and I'm gonna move this until it's centered. Until we get that nice little lines telling me that it centered up left and right animals select both those shapes now shift, select. So I've got the door shape that we've created in the star shaped as well, and I'm gonna come over here and save minus front, and what that's going to do is everything that's in front, and we've put everything in a stacking order, which I didn't really describe, but how most of the layout programs work. But when you put something on a page that's there, the next thing I put on the page is kind of on top of that, even if it's not sitting on top of it as you put each thing on the page, you're putting in a stacking order. I mean, it would be the same as if you were working on paper. You put something down, you put a shape on top and shape on top. Everything you make kind of sits on top of that next item. So what? This is going to do is it's going to get rid of everything that's in the front, which in this case, is the star. So I've selected both those items. Click minus front now it just punched a hole through the door. Now, it didn't just put a white star on the door. It actually punched a hole through it. So what I'll do is I'll take this rectangle and I'm just gonna fill it and send that to the back again. I'm only doing that to show you that the hole is there. So again, if I made it to here, we can actually see behind it. So that minus front actually took that item and punched it through and dropped it back through there. Let's close it. Transform here. And my Pathfinder closed Oppa's Well, let's bring those back was in the same panel. So I close that panel and they all went away, right? So the pathfinders here and I'm gonna create another shape will just draw this off to the side, maybe something like that. And I'm making a different color just so we can see it. And I'm just like both shapes again. Now this is one shape. So the star in the door have become one shaped like punch that hole through it, and it's now just one specific shape. Grab both of these and go to the next one. This is intersect, and it tells you right there what it's going to do so anything that any place they intersect is the only thing that's gonna be left. So can kind of guess. Look at that and kind of see how that's going to work. Onley, where the Intersect will be left in this Pathfinder will click that, and that's the only piece that's left actually gonna undo that because I want to come in here and say, Well, we could do exclude, which means it's going to get rid of any place they overlap. So when I do that, it grabbed It is one shape, and it punched out a whole here. So again, this is a whole also isn't white. I can see through this so again, always be thinking if I want to create something with the shape cut out of it, I want to take these two shapes and then just punch it through or overlap, um, and just get very interesting results again. It's a matter of putting it all together and then just trying the different shapes that air there let me. So look this and get rid of this. If I create a rectangle, come here, I'll just create the same rectangle and I'm gonna create a star. Also, hold down the shift key and let's actually that there. And I'm gonna take this item and I'm just gonna put the star right here. Gonna make a little bit bigger and a little different colors so we can see it and put those items there and select both of those the star and the rectangle and I want to divide now. So what I'm gonna do is everywhere something overlaps or intersex. It's gonna chop it kind of like the scissors tool that we were looking for earlier. So when I do that, I could create that by hand and select it and say, Cut it here in here. And just Runas run a cut through that or I can use this divide tool. So I'm gonna go ahead and click Divide now, it doesn't look hardly any different, But what I did notice is that I suddenly have a line across the star here, and what it did is it actually divided it and severed everything where it overlapped. But then it grouped it altogether. So it doesn't look any different when I look at it that way doesn't look any different, but what I can do is I can click on that, go up to the object menu and choose on group. So it severed arm all inch optimal and then group them all back into into one. So it's a one group. So when I do that and de Select, I can now select on each thing individually. If I look at this, I can move those items downwards because it actually severed it where they interacted. So I can actually do it that way. I can also take this item and then I can go ahead and I could delete this item and it cuts a hole right through there as well. So that's a nice way to get a shape cut out of something. You know, I wouldn't have been able to draw that if I was actually just trying to draw that as I drew the outside of a rectangle on the inside. So I'm punching that through a swell undo that. Bring that star back and just bring this back to where we had it before. And I can choose a couple other items that are here. Let's actually step backwards a little bit where we go. And if I choose those two items, some of my other options are trim and merge. And basically, if I had a stroke around some of these items, they would go away. Let's to say I had a darker blue stroke around that, And if I select these items and I use the trim, it brings it into one shape and gets rid of that as somebody. Depending on the different items that you have, you'll get different results. Trim. I've never seen much difference on and also on Merge Merge. Kind of does. I think the same thing, but every once a while, it'll just create this kind of weird results. Haven't really figured out the whole ins and outs of that yet. Uh, minus back is one that I use a lot as well, so anything that's back behind will disappear. So I say, minus back everything that was back behind, including the shape So it's almost a Ziff. The rectangle was on top and knocked out everything behind it, but I didn't need to bring it to the front and actually physically do that. I've just said everything that's back behind goes away, but it takes everything. It doesn't just take the back item. Oy. Otherwise I would just delete the rectangle. But what I'm doing is saying everything that's back behind the very back item takes everything with it. So is it falls away. It kind of sucks it all with it, right? So I just say, minus back. And that goes away. That makes sense. So just the different Pathfinder tools for making compound shape. So sometimes I look at something and think, How would I do that? How would I knock that out? I would do that again. Like I said, if I were doing a move right, if I said great, I want a nice crescent moon. Let's make a big yellow moon. Let's actually make the fill yellow and I would take that item and I'm just gonna duplicate it. I can copy and paste it, or it can also use the option key and drag across and again. I've got my smart guides to make sure moving kind of all together. And if I look on the left Aiken, time to see where this crescent shape is coming in. Right? So what? I need to select both of those items, and I'm going to go ahead and I can use divide. I could do that if I wanted to ungroomed that and then just select this item and this item and those were gone. All right, I'm gonna show you a quicker way to do that in just a minute. But again, I'm always thinking and shapes. How does this knockout? What's back behind or stiff deleting it that way and still doing it. I could take that item and I could say minus front. Right, Because this one is in the front. I want that to minus everything back there. Said, Come here and say, minus front. Let's find my minus front. There we go. And there's my shape as well. All right, So again, think and shapes out of how do things work together