Can a compound path have a part with stroke and a part without?

[Rachel25621105ttir]

Hello everyone, I am brand new to Illustrator and working on my first project. I designed a box template that I want to "punch out" of a white rectangle. I was able to succeed doing so (pictures attached) but I am having trouble removing the stroke around the outer edge of the rectangle. This is what I did: made a rectangle (white fill, no stroke), copied and pasted my box template (white fill, black stroke) on top, selected the rectangle and template, then Pathfinder > Minus Front. Is there a way for the stroke to stay around the edge of my template but not on the outer edge of the rectangle? Any help would be much much appreciated! Thanks! 

[Mylenium]

It's all an illusion. You need more copies of paths and trim and arrange them accordingly in the layers palette.

Mylenium

[Grant H · Accepted solution]

Hello, the box template should be "positive" and not a hole in the cardboard. The common (standard) is to have the box border as a dieline. The way you have it is one (compound) shape and the attributes will be applied to the whole shape, ie the stroke in this case. If you do not want to go with the dieline way then you can copy the box shape by using the lasso tool and cmd C (copy) then deselect everything select the whole compound shape and remove the stroke then press cmd F (place in front). This will paste the box in place with the stroke, remove the fill of the box.

And you should have something like this: (the yellow is a background so you can see the no stroke)

[Grant H]

(adding to this: remove all the fills you do not want)

[Rachel25621105ttir]

Took me a couple of tries but it worked! Thank you so much Grant!

[Grant H]

always a pleasure