Cut lines under shape

[szebenyi]

Dear community,

I have some very detailed line art, and I'd need to remove parts of it under a shape. I want to print this with a pen plotter so it's crucial that the lines remain lines, and I can't use clipping masks as the plotter doesn't recognise those, and will print it's content regardless of the mask. For simpler stuff I'd use the select all -> pathfinder outline, as then I can delete the intersecting lines, but here I'm looking for a more automated solution as I'll have to do this lots of times. Is there a plugin or something that'd achieve this goal?
In the attached image I want to remove the black lines under the red shape. If there is no option like this, it'd be nice to implement something to do this.

Thank you in advance!

[Jacob Bugge]

szbenyi,

I believe @Kurt Gold has a solution for it.

Kurt?

[szebenyi]

In the mean time I've found a not so bad solution, if you go into the hamburger menu in the pathfinder and go to pathfinder options, you can select "Divide and outline will remove unpainted artwork", with this selected, if I subtract the mask shape from a larger rectangle and apply outline to the whole artwork, the lines under the shape will be removed. This is great, but still the outline of the shape remains now split into segments, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's much easier to remove than all the lines in the shape. So I'm still looking for a better answer if possible.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Astute Graphics, for one, has a bunch of lovely plugins to do what you want, but what can make your life a bit simpler in the meantime is this:

Make your cropping path into a Clipping Mask. THEN, Select All and apply the Crop Pathfinder.

[creative_curiosity1549 · Accepted solution]

The script Split Path from here?

https://github.com/creold/illustrator-scripts/blob/master/md/Path.md#dividebottompath 

[szebenyi]

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for! A bit slow but still way faster than me doing it manually haha

[sttk3 · Accepted solution]

Have written a script for that behavior in the past. Live Paint allows you to crop through the strokes like a pathfinder.
https://sttk3.com/blog/tips/illustrator/crop-stroke.html