- In this movie, I'll show you how to subtract
and separate path outlines using the shaper tool,
and that will allow us to draw a couple of transparent
windows as well as color the roof
and the chimney independently from the rest of the house.
And so, notice that my shaper tool is still active,
and that all paths are de-selected
inside the document window,
which means I can draw another rectangle,
just by dragging like so.
And for whatever reason that ends up generating
a square, I want it to be shorter than that,
so I'll go ahead and click on the square to select it,
my bounding box is turned on, so I can just go ahead
and drag this handle downward a little bit,
and I'll drag this one upward and to the left.
Alright now just to make things more obvious,
I'll change the fill color
up here in the control panel
to this arbitrary shade of purple.
Alright now we need to create a couple of panes,
and so I'll draw a horizontal line like this,
across the entire width of the window,
and that does end up giving me an exactly horizontal line,
which is what I want,
and now I'll draw a vertical line down,
and you do have to be careful,
if you go off at a slight angle you will get an angled line,
not what I want, so I'll press ctrl-z,
or command-z on a Mac, to undo that change,
and then I'll just go ahead and drag this guy upward
like so, and this time I do get an exactly vertical line.
Alright now I'll click on the horizontal line
to select it, it's a little high up,
so I'll press the down arrow key a few times
to nudge it down.
And then I'll shift click on the vertical line,
so that they're both selected,
and now change the line weight to 10 points,
so the lines are nice and thick,
and just to be sure everything's exactly the way
it should be, I'll change the fill to none.
Alright now we want to create a copy of this window,
and you can do that by shift clicking inside the window,
in order to select it,
so keep in mind that the shaper tool doubles
as a selection tool, inside Illustrator,
and then I'll go ahead and drag these guys over
to the right, and I want to make sure
that this is an exactly horizontal drag,
so I'll press and hold the shift key,
in order to constrain the angle,
and I want to duplicate the window,
so I'll press the alt key or the option key
on a mac.
And then I'll just go ahead
and drop these shapes into place.
Alright now I want to subtract
the purple windows from the house,
and so I'll click in an empty portion of the document window
to deselect the artwork,
and then I'll draw a Z in this area like so,
but notice what happens is I subtract just that one
intersecting area, I don't subtract the entire window.
And so if I were to draw a big zig zag
across the entire window like so,
then I end up subtracting the panes
from the window instead,
which is in no way what I want,
and so the idea is that the shaper tool
is looking at the entire composite artwork,
and so what I need to do is get the panes out of the way.
And so I'll press ctrl Z, or command Z on a Mac,
a couple of times, to undo those subtraction operations,
and then I'll click on this horizontal line and shift click
on the vertical line to select it,
and then I'll shift click on each of these lines,
to select them as well,
and I'll go up to the edit menu and choose the cut command,
or you can just press ctrl X or command X on a Mac.
And that way, the panes are no longer in the way.
Now if I draw a Z inside this purple window,
I'll subtract the window from the house,
now you want to keep that zig zag inside the window,
if you end up dragging it out of the window,
like so, then you'll fuse those various shapes together.
Obviously that's not what I want,
so I'll press ctrl Z, command Z on a Mac,
and I'll just draw a Z inside this window as well.
And now notice if I click inside the house,
I select the entire house, but if I click inside the window,
I deselect the house,
and that's because the windows are not filled with white,
they are instead holes in the house,
and so if i want to change the thickness
of this window stroke,
I need to click on it's outline.
And now I'll shift click on the other windows outline,
and then with those two rectangles selected,
I'll change the line weight to six points,
so it matches the other lines in the artwork.
And finally, I'll click off the art work to select it,
and then I'll go up to the edit menu,
and choose paste in back,
or I have that keyboard shortcut of ctrl b,
or command B on a Mac,
and that goes ahead and pastes the pane lines,
in back of the house, as an entirely separate object,
because after all no part of the house was selected.
And that demonstrates that the windows
are indeed holes as opposed to rectangles
filled with white.
Alright now I want to change the color of the roof
and chimney, and so I'll click anywhere on the house
to select the entire thing,
and now I can switch to that construction mode,
either by clicking on this down arrow widget,
or just in case you want another way to work,
you can just double click on either of the sub paths,
and so if I were to double click on the chimney,
I'll select it independently of the rest of the artwork,
you can see we're in construction mode by the way because
the down arrow widget has changed to an up arrow,
and now I'll shift click on the roof to select it as well,
and now I'll change the color of those two objects
by clicking in the fill swatch,
up here in the control panel,
and changing it to this deep shade of blue right here.
Notice however that that does not continue the stroke,
so if I were to click off the artwork to deselect it,
and then control space bar click,
or command space bar click on a Mac,
in order to zoom in on my artwork,
notice that I'm seeing a sharp miter joint,
here at the edge of the roof,
but I'm seeing a round joint, at the intersection
of the roof and the house.
And that's because, notice if you were to double click
on this stroke right here,
in order to select it independently of the rest
of the artwork,
and clicked on the word stroke up here in the control panel,
notice the cap is set to round,
and by virtue of the fact that we have one round cap
running into another one,
we have what looks to be a round joint.
What I want to do however is continue the stroke,
along the bottom edge of the roof,
and so I'll go ahead and click off the artwork once again
to deselect it,
I'll press ctrl 0 or command 0 on a Mac
in order to fit the artwork on screen,
and then I'll double click on the triangle,
in order to select it independently
inside the construction mode,
and I'll shift click on the chimney,
and I'll just go ahead and drag both of these objects upward
like so, and I went ahead and pressed the shift key
in order to constrain the angle
of my drag to exactly vertical,
and now notice we regain the stroke
along the bottom edge of the roof,
and now if I go ahead and drag these paths back downwards,
once again, while pressing the shift key,
to constrain the angle of my drag,
notice that the blue roof and chimney are permanently
selected from the green house,
so that we have a six point stroke, dividing the two.
And now I'll just go ahead and turn off the guides layer
so that we can see the childishly simple house
all by itself.
And that's how you subtract and separate path outlines
using the shaper tool, here inside the newest version
of Illustrator CC.