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Activity Forums Adobe Illustrator Boolean operation – cutting away parts around the edge of a circle (picture included).

  • Boolean operation – cutting away parts around the edge of a circle (picture included).

    Posted by Guld Urna on March 23, 2012 at 12:04 pm

    Hi,

    I’m trying to make a logo which consists of only two stars and a circle. I have been trying to use the Pathfinder tool in Illustrator CS3 but have not succeeded.

    In the picture below you can see that I have the blue circle selected and you an see the light blue edge around it when selected. This is the outer edge that i would like to keep. Everything outside of this light blue edge I wish to disappear.

    This means that I want the two stars (1 x white and 1 x blue) to be _cut_ around this edge. The result would be the blue circle/sphere and about half of both the white and blue stars within – but the stars would be nicley cut around the rounded edge of the circle.
    Everything outside the circle’s edge should be gone.

    I want one vector object consisting of the circle and half of the stars within.

    Does anyone know how to do this? Do I need CS5 for this?

    Guld Urna replied 14 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Vincent Rosati

    March 23, 2012 at 11:07 pm

    The easiest option might be to just select everything and do Pathfinder / Divide.
    After everything is broken into pieces, you can select the unwanted portions with the Group select tool and delete them. Then if any objects need to be joined back together, select them and Pathfinder / Unite.

    Or of you want to keep the star shapes, select the circle and Copy/Front (Ctrl + C, release C, F), or Edit / Copy, Edit / Paste in Front.
    Then select a circle and bring it to the front, Ctrl + Shift + ] (Object / Arrange / Bring to Front). Now with one of the circles on top, select it and the two stars and Ctrl + 7 (Object / Clipping Mask / Make).

    Vince

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  • Guld Urna

    March 26, 2012 at 9:51 am

    You, Sir, are a frikkin’ GOD.
    Thank you soooo much for helping me with this. And may I add – thank you for explaining it in such detail. The part where you go out of your way and say “After everything is broken into pieces, you can select the unwanted portions with the Group select tool and delete them” – This part made me actually _understand_ the Pathfinder Divide option. I played with that function before but didn’t really _get_ what the result was. Now that you informed me that the Group Select Tool also exists, well that just made an enormous difference when I all of a sudden was able to select individual broken out shards/shapes and just delete them.

    I was laughing out loud in joy then the program did _exactly_ what I had envisioned but failed to accomplish on my own. You just made me very, very happy and I can not thank you enough.

    This program has such power but I am such a dweeb at using it.

    Vince, you ROCK. 🙂

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