By using the Alt or Option key to trim your shapes, you save a lot of time. What do you think about the shape builder tool? Was it easy for you to get the hang of it? I’m sure that you noticed how quickly you could create amazing custom shapes by using the shape builder tool. The Shape Builder Tool, which was added in Illustrator CS5, allows you to combine multiple shapes in various.You can merge shapes, as well as subtract one shape from another. This makes it easy to trim parts of the shape away that you do not want.
By holding down the Alt or Option key, you can subtract shapes from your selection. This enables you to combine the parts that you want to, without including the pieces that you don’t want.
Simply by clicking and dragging your mouse, you can combine overlapping shapes. With all of the shapes selected activate the Shape Builder tool (Shift+M) and hold Alt to activate the minus front mode, you can tell you are in this mode by the blue outline that appears over your shape and the tiny minus symbol next to the cursor. Select the Shape Builder tool in the Tools panel. The shape builder tool makes it easy to combine shapes into one custom shape. What you should have learned: Select the shapes you want to combine with the Selection tool in the Tools panel. Instead of tediously drawing your complex shape with the pen tool, you can combine several shapes together to create the complex shape that you’re looking for. When creating complex shapes in Illustrator, you can use different shapes together to form one shape.
#SHAPE BUILDER TOOL ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS5 HOW TO#
In the video below, I’ll show you how to use the Shape Builder tool in Adobe Illustrator. Knowing which tools to use to save you time when creating complex shapes can make you more productive, and enable you to work faster. Luckily for us, Adobe has come up with the Shape Builder Tool, which lets us achieve a higher level of creativity using just a couple of clicks, as you'll see. Creating shapes in Illustrator can sometimes become a non-intuitive process, especially if you're doing it using Pathfinder's Shape Modes. You can group them together, you can draw them with the Pen Tool, or you can combine them into one single shape. Illustrator in 60 Seconds: Shape Builder Tool. There are many different ways to make and combine shapes in Adobe Illustrator. Learning how to combine shapes to make complex shapes is an essential part of knowing how to use Adobe Illustrator.