: Illustrator: A way to merge overlapping lines of adjacent shapes? I often create designs that I need to bring to a laser cutter. To save time and material, I pack repeated shapes as close
I often create designs that I need to bring to a laser cutter. To save time and material, I pack repeated shapes as close as possible. The ideal scenario is that shapes share a single line where possible; for example, two (or more) squares put adjacent so that they share a common side.
The problem with simply aligning the squares to be adjacent is that two path still exist in the overlap, and the laser will pass through that area twice. This double cut wastes time and reheats the material in that area. For this simple example, I could manually draw a long rectangle and divide it evenly into squares with single lines, but this becomes much more difficult with even slightly more complex shapes.
Is there an automatic method to merge overlapping paths into a single path? The similar questions I've seen here about this involve merging paths that overlap entirely vs paths that share an adjacent side or sides.
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Just use the Direct Selection (White Arrow) Tool to select the overlapped paths and delete them.
Say I have the following shapes with overlapping paths:
I would:
Lock the two center shapes in the Layers Panel
Make sure all paths are deselected (Ctrl+Shift+A)
Using the Direct Selection tool, click directly on the path segment you want to remove. Shift-click to select multiple segments at once, then just hit Delete:
Hope that helps...
Illustrator has no method to remove overlapping paths which I'm aware of.
It takes manual deletion of any overlapped path in all instances since two shapes can't "share" a common path segment in terms of construction. Pathfinder/Shape Builder are also generally no help with this either. They are both geared more towards creating/removing individual objects, not recognizing overlapping paths. They will both generate the same path overlaps you get from manual construction when they deem it necessary.
All you can really do is create objects differently. For example, create a primary outer shape, then manually draw interior division as separate, single paths.
In the case of entire shapes overlapping path, then Shape Builder may be of use. But it'll still fail miserably for just paths which overlap due to adjacent shapes.
I don't believe that there's an automatic way of doing it. How would the computer know which shapes you want combined and which you don't?
As an alternative, you can select the shapes you want to combine,
Then use Merge option from pathfinder.
Go to: Window > Pathfinder > Merge (Command/Ctrl+Shift+F9)
For Illustrator Illustrator CC (2015) and older
You can also use the Shape Builder Tool (Shift+M)
As of Illustrator CC (2015.2) there is also the Shaper tool which works similar to Shape Builder tool - Read more at Adobe
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