- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll show you another way
to join open path outlines in Illustrator.
And that's to use the Join tool.
And along the way, we're going to take this collection
of straight lines that I drew
using the standard line segment tool,
and we're going to turn them into this white arrow.
Now the thing about the Join command
is that it typically works best
when all of the endpoints line up with each other,
as was the case with the spiral in the previous movie.
And so here, for example,
we have a bunch of half-circles up here
at the top of the document
whose endpoints exactly align with the circles
at the bottom of the document.
But that's not the case with these straight lines.
And so, any time that the endpoints
don't exactly align with each other,
then the Join command is going to connect them
with straight segments.
And to demonstrate what that looks like,
I'll just go ahead and press Control + A
or Command + A on the Mac
in order to select everything inside this document.
And then I'll go up to the Object menu,
choose Path and then choose Join.
And you can see that we now have
these little straight segments
between what were formerly endpoints,
which, of course, is not what we want.
And so if you run into a scenario like that,
your better option is to use the join tool.
So I'll go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac to undo the Join command.
And then I'll click and hold on the pencil tool,
midway down the toolbox.
Or if you're working in the most recent version
of Illustrator, you may need to click
and hold on the Shaper Tool instead.
Either way, you can select the Join Tool
from the bottom of this flyout menu.
And now notice, if I just go ahead
and drag over these segments right there,
that will go ahead and get rid of them
and fuse that area right there
into a single path outline.
Alright, now I'm going to go ahead
and drag across these two points
that don't even overlap each other.
Notice that.
But they're sufficiently close
that Illustrator figures out exactly what to do.
Alright, now I'll press Control + A
or Command + A on the Mac again
to select my remaining path outlines.
And I'll just go ahead and drag
over the top of the arrow.
And once again, it works out beautifully.
And now, I just want to select the top of the arrow,
not its stem.
So in other words, I need to deselect what's selected
and select what's not selected.
And if you ever run into that situation,
all you have to do is go up to the Select menu
and choose Inverse.
And that will go ahead and reverse the selection.
Alright, now I'm going to drag over this area right there
to fuse it, and we end up with an arrowhead.
The next step is to press the V key to switch back
to the black arrow tool and click on this stem right there.
And then I want you to change the line weight to 60 points
so that we have a nice thick stroke.
And now we want to convert that stroke
to a path outline.
And you do that by going to the Object menu,
back down to the Path submenu,
and you choose this guy right here,
Outline Stroke, which will draw a path outline
around that stroke.
And now, if you press Shift + X
in order to swap the fill and stroke attributes,
then you'll end up with this black stroke and no fill.
After which point, I'll take the line weight value
back up to four points.
Alright, now you want to press the A key
in order to switch to the white arrow tool.
And then click off the path to deselect it.
And then, just click on its top segment right there
to select it independently of the anchor points
and press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac
to get rid of it.
Now I want you to click on this point right there,
and we want to cut the path at that location
by going up to this little scissors icon up here
in the Control panel and clicking on it.
And now we have two anchor points
at that location which I can confirm
by clicking off them and then dragging one
around like so.
Alright, I don't want it up there though,
so I'll press Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac
to undo that change.
And I'll press Control + A
or Command + A on the Mac
in order to select all my path outlines.
And now I'll switch back to my Join tool right there,
and I'll just go ahead and drag over those guys.
I can drag over these guys
in order to finish off the project.
So you never know.
Sometimes you need to select the path outlines.
Other times you don't.
Alright, now I'm going to press the V key
in order to switch back to the black arrow tool.
And I'll select my fused arrow.
And I'll go ahead and take the line weight
up to 10 points like so.
And then I'll click off the path outline
in order to deselect it.
And that's how you use the Join tool
to join a bunch of open paths
that are not aligned with each other
in order to create a custom shape
here inside Illustrator.