- In this movie I'll demonstrate two additional options
that might otherwise leave you scratching your head,
and they're both available inside of that
shape builder dialog box.
So I'll go ahead and select the tool
and then I'll press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac,
and they are these.
First, we have Gap Detection
up here at the top of the dialog box,
and then we have what is possibly the most poorly named
function inside the entire software, In Merge Mode,
whatever that is, Clicking Stroke Splits the Path.
But it turns out, they're both useful functions,
so let me show you how they work.
I'll go ahead and cancel out,
and then I'll press ctrl + N or cmd + N on the Mac
to create a new document.
It's going to have a width of 1008 pts
and a height of 672 pts, just like usual.
Now I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to create that new file.
And I'll go ahead and grab my Ellipse tool,
and I'll just draw a circle someplace in this document
like so, and I'll go ahead and fill it, let's say,
with green.
And now I'll press the V key
to switch back to my Black Arrow tool.
And I'm going to move this shape to right about there
while I press the alt key or the option key on the Mac
to create a duplicate of it.
And then I'll press ctrl + C, ctrl + F,
or cmd + C, cmd + F, to make a copy of this shape,
and I'll click on the word Transform
to bring up the transform panel,
make sure that the right point in the reference point matrix
is selected, then go to the fly out menu
and choose Flip Horizontal
in order to flip that shape like so.
And now I'm just going to marquee both these shapes
and drag them down.
And what I want to do is create a slight gap
between these three shapes like so.
All right, so now let's say I go ahead and marquee
all three shapes to select them,
and I grab my Shape Builder tool and I press the shift key
so that I can marquee all three shapes,
and that basically doesn't do anything.
They're still independent shapes as we can see
by pressing the V key to switch back
to the Black Arrow tool.
And as you can see, I can drag them around
just as much as I ever could.
All right, so I'll press ctrl + Z,
or cmd + Z on the Mac to undo that change,
and then I'll just go ahead and marquee though shapes again,
click on the Shape Builder tool
and this time I'll press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac to bring up
the Shape Builder Tool Options dialog box,
and I'll turn on Gap Detection.
And now you have the option of setting how big the gap is.
And you can just fool around with that to see what works,
but I'm going to set it to medium,
or you can dial in your own custom value if you like.
And then I'll go ahead and click OK,
and now if I once again shift marquee those shapes,
I join them altogether because Illustrator
is filling in the gap.
Now it's not necessarily the most beautiful effect,
as you can see right here,
but it is possible and it may be the kind of thing
that you'll find useful at some point in time.
All right, I'm going to zoom back out
and press the backspace key to get rid of that thing.
Now let's check out what happens when you work with
absolutely open unfilled paths.
So I'm going to go ahead and select, let's say,
the Arc tool right here,
and then I'll draw a big arc like so
while pressing the shift key to constrain it
to exactly a quarter circle like so.
And it happens to have a width and a height of 400 pts,
not really all that important but there it is.
All right, now I'm going to go ahead and cross this arc
with a straight line that I'll draw
with the Line Segment tool.
So I want to get my cursor into the right position here,
and thanks to the fact I have smart guides on,
I can see those intersect lines.
And now I'll drag up into the right
while pressing the shift key like so.
And that'll give me a perfectly diagonal line.
All right, now I'm going to press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
I'll marquee both of these paths
and let's set the line weight to something like 10 pts
so we can see what we're doing.
Now if you go over here to the Shape Builder tool
and you try to do something to these lines
like shift marquee them, nothing really happens
as you can see.
And that's because once again, they are open
and they are unfilled.
If you would like something to happen,
if you would like to split the arc at that straight line,
for example, then go ahead and press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac,
to bring up the Shape Builder Options dialog box.
And you might as well turn off Gap Detection
while we're here, and then turn on this checkbox,
In Merge Mode, Clicking Stroke Splits the Path,
and click OK in order to dismiss the dialog box.
And now notice, if you hover over that stroke,
it turns red, at which point you can click on it.
And with any luck, that'll work.
It doesn't always work but in my case it did,
because I can see a little anchor point at this location,
and now I'm going to click on a straight line as well
to break it hopefully.
And now I'll press the V key to switch back
to the Black Arrow tool.
I'll click off the paths to deselect them.
This guy is now split like so,
and this guy did not get split.
Notice that?
So it doesn't always work the way it's supposed to,
but I'm going to go ahead and press the A key
to switch to my White Arrow tool,
and I'll click on this end point right there
to select it and I'll drag it until it snaps into alignment
with the end of the arc.
And then I'll drag it again to the other end of the arc
and press the alt key or the option key on the Mac,
to create a copy of that line.
I'll press the V key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool.
I'll click on this arc to select it
and then I'll press the backspace key to get rid of it,
and now I'm going to marquee all three of these lines
like so, and I'll go up to the Object menu,
choose Path and then choose Join,
or you can just press ctrl + J or cmd + J on the Mac
in order to join those open paths into a single closed one.
All right, now I'm going to click on the word Transform
up here in the control panel,
and I'm going to change my rotate value right there,
but first I'm going to rotate around the center.
And now I'll dial in a rotate value
of -90-22.5.
And the reason -22.5 is because that's half
of the 45 degrees that are left to this arc.
And now I'll press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac, and that's going to rotate
my shape upward like so.
And now if I grab my Ellipse tool and I draw a little circle
in there and I go up to the control panel
and click on the first swatch,
change it to this dark shade of red
and then click on the second swatch for the stroke
and change it to none, and then press the V key
to switch back to my Black Arrow tool
and drag this guy down just a little bit
and click off of it, I end up with a pepperoni pizza!
And so that's how you work with those two
Shape Builder Tool Options, which are Gap Detection
and In Merge Mode, Clicking Stroke Splits the Path.