How to Cut an Area Out of a Vector in Illustrator
- 1). Use any of Adobe Illustrator's drawing tools to create two vector objects. You can draw freeform objects with the Pen tool, circles of differing sizes with the Ellipse tool, a rectangle and a square with the Rectangle tool, or any combination of objects.
- 2). Choose the "Selection" tool from the Adobe Illustrator toolbox. Select both the objects that you want to incorporate into your compound path. Make sure they overlap and intersect correctly.
- 3). Select "Make" from the Compound Path fly-out menu of the Object menu. Adobe Illustrator creates a compound path from your intersecting objects.
- 4). Open the Attributes panel by choosing "Attributes" from the Window menu. If you're not seeing a hole cut in one object by the other component of your compound path, select the element you want to be the hole and click on the "Reverse Path Direction" button.
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