Illustrator cs4 Eraser Question..

[aboynamedjon]

Randomly while I was working, my eraser tool started to act up.  Now every time I try to use erase, the area I "erase" ends up surrounded by a thick, black outline- how can I change this or turn it off?  I was using my eraser before and it was working fine, but now it seems to be "outlining" everything I want to erase- any suggestions for a frustrated artist?

Jon

[Niles_Ridgeman]

I’d check my “appearance” panel. I’m guessing you’ve got a stroke of some sort going on.

Try a new document and see if it is doing it there too.

[aboynamedjon]

The new document is clean, and I can erase correctly, but in my other drawing if I have a stroke activated I'm not sure how to get rid of it- even after eliminated everything out of the appearance panel the eraser-outline is still bold as ever- and it overlaps both layers instead of just the one im working on.

[Niles_Ridgeman]

Humm. Hard to tell, can you post the offending file?

Also, it can help to go through the layers pallet and expand things. Sometimes knowing what is there helps.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Go to the Appearance Panel make sure New Art Has Basic Appearance is checked.

Make sure your art has no stroke , if it does this is expected behavior.

Double click the Eraser Tool in the Tool Bar and check the settings and options for the Eraser tool.

It would be a great feature to have the ability to have strokes on any number of segment6s of an object but not all of them if theuse desired it.

[slong423]

I'm having this same problem with CS 5.1. I checked my appearances and my eraser settings, and neither of those did anything. This certainly is frustrating.

[Kurt Gold]

Can you provide a sample .ai file?

Seasoned with some instructions?

[irasemar43172405]

Hey! Maybe it was figured out a while a go, but this helps Illustrator Eraser tool | Veerle's blog 3.0 the basic idea is that the object you are trying to erase has to be selected.

[andrbrad]

If anyone is still asking this question, I figured out why this was happening to me:

I was trying to erase a brush stroke (use the blob brush tool to draw, it creates expanded shapes, not single vector lines) and the area I was erasing kept getting a thick stroke. I do not want to select every shape to erase, so I kept experimenting. I read that the eraser will erase everything—every layer and shape— if nothing is selected, that included a circle shape that was behind my drawing, even though the circle had no fill. The circle still erased because it was considered a closed shape. That circle had a stroke applied to it, so I was essentially erasing a part of the circle and taking "chunks" out of it. These "empty spaces" would then apply the stroke from the rest of the circle.

If you are drawing lines or brushes and want to cleanly erase them without having to select every line, draw with no other shapes behind your drawing or lock those background shapes by checking the box next to the eye in the layer window, or draw on its own layer and lock all other layers.

Hopefully this helps

–Andrew

[kaleywells34]

How do I turn off the 'effect' and just erase?

[Monika Gause]

  schrieb

How do I turn off the 'effect' and just erase?

Please read this about the eraser tool:

http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeillustrator/2009/04/mysteries_of_the_eraser_tool_r.html

[andrbrad]

What do you mean by "effect"?

[channtel98]

How I got around it was to select the item you want to erase then use the eraser tool.

[ginas61072769]

I was just having the same issue it was driving me crazy but I remembered to make it an outline. Shift+Command+O once I did this it erased with no problems. I hope this helps.