Illustrator Blend Problem

[Vector J]

I created a simple Blend tutorial a few years ago and was sharing it with my group recently and now it doesn't work. The basic operation was to create an ellipse, use the scissors tool to cut the top and bottom anchor points which creates two ellipses. Then use the blend tool to blend them together. As you can see in the attached image, the blend now tries to blend to the center because the scissor tool reverses the path on one side. The easy fix was to reflect one side horizontally, but it wasn't obvious and first and totally unexpected.

When did this change and why?

[Monika Gause]

Path direction. You need to reverse direction of one of the paths.

[Jerry33141149xg5u]

I understand that but previously this extra step wasn't required when I used the scissors tool. If you look at my example.

[Doug A Roberts]

Which version did you use? I get the same result (concentric ellipses) in both CC 2017 and 2023 regardless of how I cut the path.

[Jerry33141149xg5u]

It might have been prior to CC 2017. I wrote it a long time ago. It was annoying to have someone try my technique out and tell me "This isn't working at all" and me trying to figure out why.

[Doug A Roberts]

I get the same result in CS6 also. That's the oldest version I can check.

[Jerry33141149xg5u]

Thanks for checking. That is a the last version I had too. I guess it was just my mistake or some weird fluke. At least it is an easy fix.