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dane_7051
Known Participant
July 9, 2025
Answered

Fill not covering lines?

  • July 9, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 334 views

I'm working on a project and using shapes ontop of one another with fills to hide geometry. I'm doing this becuase if I want to move the elements later the linework that is behind won't be destroyed, so I don't have to extend and retrim stuff. For some reason now when I fill with solid white at 100% opacity normal blend mode, it doesn't hide linework. It hides other fills, but not lines. I've tried messing around with layer order but it doesn't make any difference. Wether the fill is at the top of the layer stack or the bottom it doesn't change anything. It appears to only happen on this layer. If I move the object group to another layer, it behaves normally. However, if I draw new shapes on those other layers, it makes no difference, and the fills don't block their own lines either, so this is making me think I accidentally turned on some setting or something since it's happening with all new shapes, but then it mostly happens on the "Rear Lines" layer it seems so I can't tell. I've uploaded an example illustrator file as well as a short video to show what I'm talking about as best as I can.

 

In the video, I know that when I was drawing a new shape on the red "Rear Lines" layer that it would not hide the "Plans" layer lines, but don't know why it wouldn't when I was drawing on the "Plans" layer.

 

I've also restarted my illustrator and there was no change if that would help with anything.

 

I'm sure this is some simple fix or some layering problem. Any help is great.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vm1zimvor6sh9vd/Fill_not_filling.ai/file

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/3tgdv1p3iwfz6nh/Fill_not_filling_trouble_shooting.mp4/file

Correct answer Monika Gause

Your strokes are applied to the layer.

This is similar to your problem: https://youtu.be/YZooJyG2UT4 

4 replies

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 10, 2025

Looks like your layer has an appearance applied.

Click the top layer item in the Appearance panel and select Clear Appearance from the menu.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 10, 2025

Your strokes are applied to the layer.

This is similar to your problem: https://youtu.be/YZooJyG2UT4 

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dane_7051Author
Known Participant
July 10, 2025

Thank you for the help. What I'm trying to do is control the lineweight by the layer but then fills on a per object basis. I have hundreds of lines in this layer so I don't necessarily want to be setting the stroke for each line, rather each line individually has no stroke but the layer has the stroke appearance. This allows me to just draw on that layer and the lines adopt that layers stroke color and width. I suppose from your video and poking around a bit more that the layer Appearance Fill, which is set to "None," is overwriting the object fill that I set to white.

 

Is there some way to make it so that the layer applies a stroke, but no fill, so that I can have the ability to control the fill on a per object basis?

 

For now I've just moved the objects to another layer above and I'm controlling the stroke and fill per object with the layer having no appearnce.

 

Thank you both for the help!

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 10, 2025

In some cases you can achieve that by applying pathfinder effects to the stroke of the layer. But that doesn't work in your case. If these were all closed shapes, then the Pathfinder effect Merge could possibly help. But yours are also open paths.

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dane_7051Author
Known Participant
July 9, 2025

I went ahead and uploaded the video to youtube to save the download for you and if you were concerned about securtiy. I can't seem to upload any illustrator files and I get an error saying "The attachment's fill not filling.ai content type (application/postscript) does not match its file extension and has been removed," even though it's a direct save from illustrator, so I had to provide a different download link.

 

https://youtu.be/hZuxNRio2Oc

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dane_7051Author
Known Participant
July 9, 2025

Ignore the end of the video where I draw shapes over other lines in the second file, I realized I was confusing myelf with the layer structrue for those, the rest still stands.

 

However, I went back and double checked and even with this fill path at the top of a the same layer as the curve beneath it, the curve still shows. 

 

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