Combining error

[letterman7]

Hi all,
Weird issue that crops up occasionally that only makes a difference if I'm putting together composites: for example, I'll draw a square and draw a circle in the middle of it. Apply a color, say red, to the square and leave the circle as either empty (no color) or a random color. I'll combine the two, which should eliminate the circle color and make it "transparent" to the background, but that doesn't happen - the circle will merge with the square and take on the square's color. I'll try to trim the circle from the square to obtain the same effect, but the same thing happens - the two objects will merge and be all one color. I've tried exiting and resetting the file by coming back in - sometimes that works, but more often it doesn't. I'm using X5, but I've had it happen in earlier versions.
Weird, frustrating... any ideas?

Rick

 

[J Hill Designs]

wierd. never had that happen. maybe you accidentally have 2 circles?

 

[letterman7]

No, these are individual objects. What I was doing was re-doing an earlier client logo, changing a few elements. It was a "fresh" file with no previous edits.

 

[J Hill Designs]

wierd. I just tried. combine worked with 1 inner circle, didnt work when 2 were on top of each other

 

[letterman7]

Yep, no clue. I even broke everything apart and copied an element to another page and got the same error. So it must be something with the file, but damned if I can find it....

 

[Terremoto]

I believe what you're running into is something called the "winding rule".

In other words the node direction is going in the same direction for each of the objects you're trying to combine. What you need to do is take one of the objects, select all nodes in that object and reverse the node direction. A button will be available to this once you have all nodes selected with the "Shape Tool".

Now select your two objects and combine them as you normally would.

That should solve your problem.

Dan

 

[letterman7]

I'll be "Danned"... that worked! I've never heard of that before and have to wonder why it works that way. Makes no sense that the direction of a line makes a difference...
As an aside, I only selected the "start" node - the arrow - and was able to reverse it from there. No need to select the entire line.

Interesting. Ya learn somethin' new every day. Thanks, Dan!

 

[J Hill Designs]

strange. I tested the theory by reversing nodes on a test circle and it still combined properly. oh well, at least yer all fixed up