Inconsistent behavior from the Blob Brush tool - Illustrator 24.0.03 & Catalina 10.15.3

[sederb35272365]

The Blob Brush tool will not aways 'blob' with a shape (merge with it) even when all the properties are matching and correct (same color and no fill). I will make a shape with a solid fill and no stroke. I will select the Blog Brush tool to paint over it with the same color and it won't merge with the shape as it should. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I have tried turning off GPU to see if that helps, but it doesn't. I have never had this problem before. 

The only thing that I have noticed is that when a shape is first created with no stroke and a solid fill and I immedately use the Blog Brush it seems to work everytime. However, if I have existing shape with a fill and and stroke and turn the stroke off in order to use it with the blob brush tool it is more likely that it won't work (even though the fill color matches with the Blob Brush color). It's as though the Blob Brush tool is still seeing the original shape attributes even though the Properties panel and elsewhere clearly show that the stroke is off. This is not even consistent though. 

System spec and screen grabs are below. 

Thanks. 

Also, I deleted Illustrator Preferences and the behaviour continues. 

Illustrator 24.0.03 

Mac OX Catalina 10.15.3

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)

Radeon Pro 560 4 GB

[tromboniator]

Double-click on the Blob Brush tool in the toolbar, and in the resulting dialog box deselect Merge Only with Selection.

Peter

[simonez5547046]

did that. didnt work

[michelew83603738]

What are your settings for the blog brush tool? That might be the problem.

[eric the fish]

I have this same issue with erratic merging between existing shapes and new blobs. 

I found that shapes created AFTER using the blob brush would merge, but PRE-existing shapes would not.

What works for me is to draw a new blob shape somewhere out of the way, then use the eyedropper tool to copy/paste the appearance properties from the new blob to the "resistant" shape. 

Once this is done, I can draw new blobs that merge with the existing shape. 

Hope this helps.

Greg

[reginat82830231]

I have found this random merging VERY frustrating. And since I do a lot of lettering, I can't just draw off to the side. I use Illustrator instead of Photoshop for the purpose of keeping all the little strokes separate for easier manipulation, but half the time I find that the strokes are suddenly merged together even when I specifically keep that function turned off. Older versions of Illustrator never had this problem and I REALLY wish Adobe would fix this.

[Nacoca Ko]

having the same issue!

[Nacoca Ko]

this helped - it was a hack but thanks!