changing the shape drawn with the pen tool into a shape without the handles, how?

Question

I drew some shapes with the Pen Tool and I've been trying to work out how to change them to shapes without the extending arms that just out from the anchor points, but have a bounding box around them.

I thought Exclude would convert it, but no.

Convert to Shape tells me that I can't.

And Merge in Pathfinder didn't do anything, either.

What I want to be able to do is put the bounding box around my shapes so that I can scale and otherwise transform them, but I only get the anchors with the handles jutting out.

How do I convert shapes drawn with the Pen Tool to regular shapes in Illustator?

tromboniator · Accepted Answer

If you select the object with the Selection Tool (black arrow) either by clicking on the path or marquee selecting (dragging a rectangle over the path) you should see the bounding box with no handles on the anchor points. If no bounding box appears, in the View menu choose (as Lukas says) Show Bounding Box. The menu will now say "Hide Bounding Box", and the bounding box should be visible.

If you select the object with the Group Selection Tool (white arrow with + sign), all anchor points, with handles, will be selected (unless Hide Edges has been selected in the View menu, in which case it will say Show Edges).

If you select with the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow), what you see will depend on whether you marquee selected or clicked, and exactly where you clicked and how much you marqueed.

But you will only see the bounding box when using the black Selection Tool.

Apologies if that's confusing.

Peter

Edit: Looks like Doug covered it.

Larry G. Schneider · Answer

In the View menu does it say Show or Hide Bounding Box?

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