Hello. Hey, it is Pathfinder Secrets Time. Okay? In this course I often use the Shape Builder tool to kind of combine shapes like this. And it works great, but it is very destructive. Uh, we're gonna look at the Pathfinder tool and show you that it has a super secret feature where we can make things non-destructive has pros and cons.
But watch this. I've got this kinda like Aus blobby bacteria looking thing, okay? And watch this. I can go into it and watch. I can move it around. Ooh, it's not kind of fixed in time forever.
It has adjustability. Alright, let's jump in and reveal the secrets of the Pathfinder. Alright? Uh, open up the Pathfinder file from your exercise files. Okay? And we're gonna open up the pathfinder window as well.
So good window go down to Pathfinder there. It's, it is in your properties panel, but it's kind of cut down and we wanna look at this on purpose, nice and big. So a lot of my courses, I do a lot in the shape builder tool. Okay? So I select it all grabbed the shape builder tool and I kind of just, I wanna join these up to make them kinda like one anatomy blob thing. The only problem with that, it's very destructive, okay?
If I want to move the circle around, I can't. So I'm gonna get undo until I go all it back. And this is where the pathfinder is really helpful. So if I get my black arrow and what you'll notice is what says if I click on this first one called Unite, okay, does everybody use Pathfinder the same way I do? You go undo, click undo, click undo. Do you find the one you want?
Okay, we want the first one. Luckily in this case, okay, I wanna join them up. So it's kind of just a quicker way than using the uh, shape builder tool. So if you prefer it this way, you end up at the exact same point. The perk with a Pathfinder though is it has a super secret trick. It's go to undo is instead of just clicking unite, if you hold down the option key on a Mac alt key on a PC and click the same thing, you're like does the same thing kind of.
But can you see if I have it selected? Can you see? Ooh, the circles are still in there. How do I get to those? Just double click on any of the lines. Okay?
And inside of here, look, oh, it's hard to see against the background Dan, but you get the idea. This is what they call non-destructive, okay? It's still doing the exact same result 'cause you're not too sure what you need to do. You're like, oh okay. It needs to be a little bit wider, a little bit bigger, and it keeps all of those dimensions in there. It's doing something sneaky with something called a compound shape.
Okay? And you can do it with any of these options here. Now let's go back, back, back. And so you can edit it by double clicking on it. The other couple of things you can do is you can select on it and you can say I want to actually, let's go. I wanna break it apart again.
You might get somebody else's artwork. You just wanna like smash it to pieces as in get all your bits back. Okay? So with a pathfinder with the selected, we can go to these options here and you can say release these compound shapes. Bam. We're back to where we started.
The other option you might do. So I'm gonna select it all, make sure I hold down the option. Keana Mac Alt keana pc. To use the non-destructive version of Unite, you can expand it. And that is basically the exact same way is clicking this first option, okay? Without holding down that special key.
So it depends what you want. And you are like, why don't we just use that for everything? Is that it's really good for simple shapes, but when you start doing complex things like our donut, It starts running into problems, okay? 'cause it's mixing compound shapes with shape of the tool and it'll gets a little messy. So if it's not complex shapes, my advice is to use the shape of the tool. So let's do a little circles.
So I'm gonna do bits of this, right? So I'm gonna do just these shapes to start with. Okay? So I've got my bite marks and my outside oval and I'm gonna go remember what key to we hold down. Okay? I want to unite them actually I don't wanna unite them.
I wanna minus front. Okay? But what key to I hold down. That's right. Option on the Mac, on a pc, click at once so we get our bite marks. Great.
I've given you the little drawing of this quiggly thing, so I wanna fill that in. Okay? So I'm gonna go, all right, I'm gonna click you hold shift, click on this one and I'm gonna go, eh, joins the line. Does this thing does, okay, we can't get the pathfinder to do what I want. It's a shape builder trick 'cause it's gotta kind of join this and it doesn't know which bits. You've gotta join these two up.
So I grab my shape builder tool, I'm gonna double click the shape builder tool and gotta reset. Just make sure everything's kind of back to how it was. And watch this. Yeah, kind of doesn't work. It's 'cause it's trying to do too much. It's trying to do this compound shape, okay?
It's trying to do some shape builder stuff. So if your drawing gets, uh, it might start off and be nice and simple. Perfect. Get your adjustments done. But eventually you might have to go you with all this complex compounding going on, I'm gonna expand it, then shift, click both of them, shift M for my, uh, shape builder tool and I'm gonna join them up now. Okay, so you might end up kind of starting one way with all the non-destructive goodness and having to kind of expand it eventually, pretty soon.
That's what I find. Everyone's doing different stuff, okay? So you might find that you can stay in the lovely pathfinder world with compound shapes for a lot longer. There you go. That is the secret trick of the pathfinder. It retains some of that editability.
We can expand it, release them. It's non-destructive, but you might find that you, you'll quickly have to be destructive and expand it if you want to do anything else with it. There you go. Pathfinder Secrets onto the next video.