Technical Illustrators.org Forum

Apologies that this is a cross post with a comment in James's recent "New Features in Illustrator" blog post, but I thought it was worth repeating here.

I’ve just realised that the new shape builder tool also works on lines – as well as closed shapes. This means that you can take a bunch of overlapping lines and trim them in less time that it's taken to type this line. : )

Apologies if I'm late to the party and the rest of you know this, but trimming lines (as opposed to closed shapes) was a major pain in previous versions – now it’s just a simple click and drag!

I did not know about that, thanks for the tip Mike.

Previously you'd have to use the scissors tool wherever you want intersecting lines to end. The Shape Builder tool makes this so much easier!

It's so much easier with the new tool. Say you've got a set of hatching lines - 20, 50, 100 lines or more. That would be beyond tedium to trim each one with the scissors tool.

Yes, you could put a clipping mask on them, but because the lines are not actually trimmed, just hidden, there are limitations with what you can do with the result.

With the new tool you can simply draw a bounding shape around them - just like you'd use for a clipping mask,, select everything and trim the wole lot in just a few simple strokes. Because the lines are actually trimmed, rather than just hidden, you can do a lot more with them...