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Chiappetta793

: Illustrator: How to make a repetitive change to a path? I'm one day into learning how to use Illustrator (though I've got some experience with paths in Photoshop, from 5 years back). I want

@Chiappetta793

Posted in: #AdobeIllustrator #Path

I'm one day into learning how to use Illustrator (though I've got some experience with paths in Photoshop, from 5 years back). I want to take a simple, rectangular path and put tabs on the sides so that each rectangle fits together kind of like puzzle pieces.

There must be a nice, easy way to do this but I can't figure it out.

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@Murray976

Draw a rectangle
Choose Object > Path > Split Into Grid...
Define the size of the pieces by altering the row and column settings for the grid
Grab the Shape Builder Tool
Click-drag to combine grid pieces
Option/Alt-click to remove pieces.

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@Merenda852

Well this worked, but it was kind of finicky.

I made a rectangular tab, using the dimensions to make sure that the tab was 1/6th the height of my path. Copied this out 6 times, grouped the tabs, and copy/pasted the group so that there were tabs on either side of my path. Aligning the tabs perfectly was a real pain, but eventually I got it.



Then I deleted every other tab.



And last, I was able to select all the tabs and my original path and use the Pathefinder->Exclude tool to produce the shape I wanted.



That's about as efficient as I can think of. The biggest time sink was in the alignment. In order for these to fit together they really need to be perfect. I think the reason it took so long was a combination of my inexperience and poor snapping settings in IA.

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