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Activity Forums Adobe Illustrator Lines won’t join

  • Lines won’t join

    Posted by Ryq Peden on October 15, 2018 at 6:13 pm

    Hey folks,

    I am doing some lines, with line tool, to create a labyrinth. When i try to get the end of some lines to join, a gap is left. When I direct select the anchor points and click “join” nothing happens or I get an error message telling me: To join you must select two end points… etc

    Also, since I designed the corners once, then copy and pasted as reflections, some of the joining lines, when zoomed way in are actually slightly off (even though I used snap to grid while doing the lines).

    Please let me know where to post the ai file so you can look and see what I mean. Thanks!

    Andrew Jehan replied 5 years, 8 months ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Kalleheikki Kannisto

    October 16, 2018 at 8:33 am

    Lines will not join if the paths are in different groups. Make sure they are on the same layer, not grouped and not turned into a compound object. “Ungroup” and “release compound object” are two separate commands, which you need to do until the commands grey out, meaning you can’t do them any further. In some odd cases you may need to actually select and cut the object out of a group and paste it in place outside the group to get it to ungroup, although that is more the case with files generated outside of Illustrator and imported into it.

    There’s a “file upload” button above the message text edit field, the last button on the far right. Once you’ve uploaded a file, you get a link to the file, which you need to copy and paste into the message text field in order for others to see it in the message context.

    Kalleheikki Kannisto
    Senior Graphic Designer

  • Keith Marshall

    March 1, 2019 at 2:20 pm

    You might try and play with the miter limit for the stroke. It is in the stroke window and is at the far right side of the window. Click in the box and raise the limit which should extend the corners. If it is at 5 raise it to 10 etc. I would also check what cap, corner and align stroke settings you are using and see if those methods give you the corners you want.

  • Andrew Jehan

    October 23, 2020 at 11:15 pm

    I know this is an old post, but it’s the first thing that comes up on Google when you ask this question. So, here’s the solution that worked for me:

    There is a “stray anchor point” under one of the actual anchor points you’re trying to join together. (When you scissor a line, and delete the unwanted line segment, it leaves two stray anchor points.)

    To fix this, you can deselect everything, then click “Select > Object > Stray Anchor Points”. Then hit delete to get rid of them. Hopefully when you try joining your lines, you will only have the two intended anchor points selected, and you won’t get the error message.

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