- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll demonstrate how
you can use the four shape modes
to create yet another kind of special object in illustrator
which goes by the name compact shape.
And so let's start off with a definition
of what I'm talking about.
I'm just going to go ahead and move
these guys around a little bit
so that the purple square completely
covers up the interior of that green ring.
Then I'll go ahead and marquee these three shapes
and I'll click on the first icon
in the first row which represents unite.
And notice I end up with a static path outline
as indicated by the word path on the
far left side of the control panel.
Alright I'll go ahead and undo that by
pressing Ctrl Z or command Z on the Mac a few times.
Things work differently if we have gaps between the paths.
Notice if I go ahead and marquee
the paths now and then click on the unite icon,
this time I've created a compound path
as you can see again on the far left side
of the control panel which gives me
a little flexibility in terms of editing.
So let's say that I want to move these paths
with respect to each other,
the easiest way to work is to just go ahead
and double click on this object
with the black arrow tool and that
will take you to the isolation mode
which prevents you from editing anything that's dimmed.
You also have access to all of the sub paths here
so that you can move them around
as much as you like.
You can even move them so that they're
half in and half outside of the main path outline
so that we have this kind of interaction.
Alright so that's how you work with a compound path.
Now let me show you how you create
and work with a compound shape.
I'm going to go up to the file menu
and choose the revert command
just so that I can restore the
original version of the document
and I'll once again marquee these three
path outlines with the black arrow tool,
and this time instead of clicking on the unite icon,
you can see that tip right there,
you press the ALT key or the option key on the Mac,
and click and that will give you a compound shape
as indicated by the words compound shape
on the far left side of the control panel.
And what that means is you have access
to all of your original path outlines.
Now there's a couple of ways you can
move them around with respect to each other.
One is to double-click on the path
in order to enter the isolation mode
and now notice I can move these paths
independently as much as I like,
and then once you get the effect you like,
just go ahead and press the escape key
in order to exit the isolation mode.
The other way to work is to switch
to the white arrow tool which you can
get by pressing the A key.
Now if at this point you click in
one of the path outlines and just start dragging,
you're going to expand that live rectangle
and you're going to distort it as well.
Which is not what I want to do.
So I'll just press control Z or command Z on the Mac,
to undo that move.
Instead if you want to select the entire shape,
go ahead and alt or option click on it
and as you may recall any time you
press the alt or option key when you're working
with the white arrow tool you get a
little plus sign next to the cursor
which indicates you're going to select
the entire sub path at which point you can
go ahead and drag it around.
The rings going to work a little differently for you.
Notice if you alt or option click on the
outside circle for example and drag it,
then you'll move it independently of the inside circle.
If you want to select both the inside
and outside circles,
then presumably you'd press control Z
or command Z on a Mac to undo that move,
and then you would alt or option click
on that path outline a second time
in order to select the entire compound path.
And so what we have here is a compound path
working inside of a compound shape.
If you want to select the entire compound shape,
you would alt or option click again,
and as you can see that lights up the rectangle
as well as the triangle and now you can
move them around as one unit,
but you should note that because the
triangles no longer over lapping anything
it's not uniting with any of the shapes either.
If you want to change that,
then click off the shapes to deselect them,
alt or option click on that triangle,
and then drag it so that you have an overlap.
Alright now let's move on to minus front.
I'll go ahead and press the V key to switch back
to the black arrow tool and I'll
marquee these shapes and I'll alt
or option click in the minus front icon
which is the second icon in the first row.
Notice this time we're subtracting
all the forward shapes from the rear one.
Which means that we're doing a lot of cutting at this point
and so let's say I want to modify this compound shape.
I'll go ahead and double click on it
to switch to the isolation mode
at which point I'm not going to see those sub paths anymore
unless I go up to the view menu
and choose outline or press control Y
or command Y on a Mac at which point
I will see them which makes it easier
to drag them around as we're seeing here.
Problem is we're not really seeing the
interaction anymore until I switch back
to the preview mode which you do by
either choosing one of the preview commands
from the view menu or again
pressing Ctrl Y or command Y on a Mac.
Now the problem is what if you want to
regain that interaction between the two rings.
So for example you want to change
these guys into a compound path,
well that's not possible when you're working
inside of a compound shape.
If I go up to the object menu,
choose compound path and choose make,
Illustrator's going to scold me
and tell me you can't do it.
So if that's what you want,
what you gotta do is go ahead and click okay of course,
and then press control Z or command Z on the Mac
as many times as it takes to regain
your original path outlines.
Then go ahead and marquee those two guys
and either go up to the object menu
choose compound path and choose make,
or of course you could just click
instead of alt or option clicking on minus front
in order to subtract one path outline from the other.
Then marquee what is now three paths,
and alt or option click on minus front
in order to turn them into a compound shape.
And now if I double click on any one of them,
I can grab this guy and move him over here for example,
and then I'll grab the triangle
and move him in a little bit as well
and we have a totally different configuration.
You can also change how the subtracting is working
by clicking on one of the path outlines
then right click and choose arrange
send to back and that way the forward shapes
will be cut away from the ring
because it is now at the back of a stack.
That's not what I want however
so I'll just go ahead and press control Z
or command Z on the Mac and then press
the escape key to exit out of the isolation mode.
Alright now let's try our hands at intersect
by marking those path outlines and alt
or option clicking on the third icon in the first row.
And this time we don't see anything
and that's because there is no point at
which all three of the path outlines intersect.
So to change that I'll just go ahead
and double click on those paths to
enter the isolation mode and then notice if you will,
when I hover my cursor over something
that's there whether it's invisible or not,
I see a little square next to my arrow.
If there's nothing under my arrow I don't see a square.
So whenever you see a square,
go ahead and try clicking and then move it
to a different location and sure enough
now I see that I have a little bit
of intersection between all these path outlines.
The thing about intersect though
is the more path outlines you have
the less likely they are to intersect
and so you may want to keep the equation fairly simple
by clicking on the triangle for example,
then clicking on the top of it
so I can select it independently of the ring,
and then just pressing the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of it
and that way you can drag the ring
over the rectangle and get some more interaction.
Alright I'll once again press the escape key
in order to exit the isolation mode,
and finally I'll marquee this last group of shapes
and alt or option click on the
fourth icon in the first row which represents exclude
and now you can see that any place
where the path outlines overlap,
they either create a hole
or the path outline ends up showing up again.
And so for example a really interesting
thing to do with exclude,
is double click on the path outline
of course to enter the isolation mode,
and then just drag these guys around
and notice how they keep interacting
with each other so it's an even odd equation.
In other words any time two
sub paths overlap you get a hole.
When three overlap you get a fill.
When four overlap you get another hole and so forth.
So if I were to marquee all these paths
and then make sure that align to selection
is active up here in the control panel,
then I could click on horizontal align center
followed by vertical align center
in order to center all these paths like so.
The only one that's not going to
center properly is the triangle
because Illustrator is terrible at
judging the center of a triangle.
So I'll just have to go ahead and nudge that guy upward.
And then I'll press the escape key
in order to exit the group isolation mode.
And that's how you work with entirely
dynamic compound shapes that you can create
using any of the four shape modes here inside Illustrator.