Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

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PATHFINDER OPERATIONS

PRIMITIVES, as you learned in Lesson 2, are the building

blocks of all illustrations, but sometimes such simple objects can’t

accurately represent your work. The alternative—drawing com-

plex shapes by hand with the pen tool—can be tedious and time-

consuming. Fortunately, Illustrator provides a shortcut: pathfi nder

operations. Pathfi nders allow you to quickly combine simple objects

to create more complex ones, as shown in Figure 6-1. A line plus an

ellipse is a musical note. Two circles next to each other and a tri-

angle below become a valentine. A circle minus a smaller, offset

circle becomes a crescent moon. A door, some drywall, and a

couple of windows—not to mention some electrical, plumbing,

heating, AC, roofi ng, and a really big loan—make a

house. These are all pathfi nder operations (well, except

for the house), and they’re amazing timesavers, one

and all. To get a sense of how they work, keep reading.

Compound Paths versus

Compound Shapes

The pathfi nder joins shapes in a few ways, each with

their own level of permanence. By default, the path-

fi nder will simply perform the operation and perma-

nently alter the target path; this change is irrevocable,

short of an undo command. A compound path is two or more sub-

paths that merge to form a single path—hence it appears as a single

object in the Layers panel. You can move one subpath independently

of ...