Expanding intertwined shapes

Question

The Intertwine feature came at a perfect time for a particular project, or so I thought. Making an Olympic Rings type image, with overlapping and underlapping circles. The circles are filled black with red strokes for example. This feature is ideal and works perfectly on screen, but I need to make a one colour file for vinyl print. So the idea was to Outline Strokes, Ungroup, then Pathfinder/Divide and delete as appliccable, leaving gaps where the red strokes overlapped the black circles at the desired points.

However, as the Intertwine feature is a live effect, this doesn't work when an intertwined shape has Outline Stroke applied, or is Expanded. The intertwining reverts. So I'm left with manually applying these breaks in the coircles, unkless you have any better ideas?

Doug A Roberts · Accepted Answer

Shape builder might be helpful?

Monika Gause · Answer

Flatten transparency should flatten everything, including effects. So you don't Expand anything separately, but just apply Flatten transparency (Outline Strokes turned on)

Afterwards hit the Pathfinder Merge a couple of times.

There might still be details you need to clean

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