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Design

Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points
Posted by Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points

Illustrator - Shape Builder Distorting Shapes.

Hey,

I'm using shape builder to delete blocks from my shapes and there seems to be an issue because my shapes are overlapping/looking distorted.

I'm confused because here's the view from outlines which doesn't show any overlap:

http://s11.postimg.org/tgeekw2zn/Illustrator2.png

And here's the normal view. The arrow represents the curved lines because shapes are overlapping for some reason.

http://s12.postimg.org/b2mzanpjx/Illustrator1.png

Help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Joe

Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points
Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points

So you're using rectangles to overlap and minus the foreground is that correct?

You could try using Pathfinder as well and use minus.

3 Answers

Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points
Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points

Hi Clint,

I basically watched this cool video from Aaron Draplin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOPA0NaeTBk

Go to 8:10.

He basically puts lines over a black shape and makes them white so it appears as if they're not there as it's on a white background.

So I thought I'd use the shape builder tool to subtract the shapes.. on the example he showed on the video it worked great but on the one I've exampled here with more layers overlapping each other it causes problems.

Illustrators driving me nuts tbh, shapes seem to distort all the time. I'll zoom in on a shape and it will look perfect but at 100% it looks terrible.

I've looked online and unticked the align to pixel grid... checked anti aliasing but it still seems to cause problems.

Maybe I just suck at Illustrator!

:)

Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points
Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points

Uhmm, I just redid what you had in your images and it worked fine for me using pathfinders. Let me do some digging and see if I can find some info for you !

Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points
Joe Consterdine
Joe Consterdine
13,965 Points

Thanks Clint!

Is it better to use pathfinder than shape builder? Or is there no difference? Shape builder is easier.

Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points
Clint Dehner
Clint Dehner
8,808 Points

their basically the same function I prefer pathfinder