How-To: Cut out letters from a rectangle

[DDmUSA]

If I create a rectangle with a solid colored fill, for example, how do I then take some typed letters and cut them out of the rectangle in order to end up with a rectangle with see-through shapes representing the typed letters?

[JETalmage]

See online Help. Look up these subjects:

Text (converting to paths)

Compound Paths

Compound Shapes (Pathfinder commands which are applied as live effects)

Pathfinder

JET

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

You create outlines of the text by going to

1 Type>Create Outlines

2 Place outline text over the rectangle

3 select both and go to Object>Compound Path>Make

Or another way that I like is for step 3

3a select both and click on the live paint bucket to convert the art to a live paint group

4 Use the live paint bucket to fill the outlined text with a fill of none.

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

Their is various ways of accomplishing what you want.

See this post on my blog:

Building a hole “see through” text or object in Adobe Illustrator

http://bit.ly/seethrough