Help with Combine?? Effect

[2000XPSD]

I have a huge tribal design with all kinds of overlap and intertwining piece that i'm cutting to a mask for airbrushing. I've been trying to apply an effect in flexi to get rid of the overlaps...i've tried ever combo available under Effect>Combine and can't do it.
For testing purposes i made a simple rectangle, outlined it , copied it, rotated it 90 and put it over the original. How can i select both and apply an effect that will knock off the overlaps that i marked in yellow?

 

[Former member]

First Make a compound object of the rectangles.... Select the first two vertical rectangles then hit ctrl + m, do the same the same with the second horizontal pair. Then select all (ctrl + A) then Effect> Combine> Weld.

 

[Techman]

yes, welding is your friend

 

[GARY CULY]

i just wanted to chime in here ....i see what your doing and you might run into a problem if your whole design is one line,,even though you have overlaps [ i have this on flames mainly] if it is one continous line it wont pop out the middles...needs to be 2 or more pieces ....if it is one line just let the cutter cut it all out overlaps and all then pick out the pieces you dont want ..now ive seen airbrush artists do this and they keep all the pieces they pick out on another piece of backing paper to use later .thell lay them pieces in there to add shadows where the tips and such overlap and give depth..pretty clever

 

[iSign]

you don't want to settle for cutting a file that has cuts in there that don't belong in there. They will shrink & expose the color of the substrate, so it's a shortcut not worth taking.

I've had vector files that were so complex to fix... but they displayed correctly on screen... that one workaround I've used on files that were way to complex to fix with welding commands... I'd size it up real large, export as a rastor image, & then vectorize that in my software. This works best on organic shapes without a lot of geometrical exact shapes & corners that would show the resulting imperfections.

 

[GARY CULY]

i must have read the post wrong ,i took it you were "painting in the mask" so its no problem with cut lines being in there where you dont need them as YOUR GOING TO PULL THAT AREA OUT and paint in there

 

[CrabbyOldGuy]

Occasionally, I have found going to path direction and selecting automatic will allow you to weld or whatever. Also, sometimes the object will weld still leaving the overlaps showing. Most times, these will be separate objects and can be deleted leaving the image just as you want it. Perhaps this will work for you.

 

[imaSIGNr]

If this is what you mean....make two boxes>weld>outline>separate outline>delete inner image