Intertwine with an offset for laser use

[Brittney27766939lorx]

Hello! I am looking for a much faster way to achieve this look. I want to intertwine letters to use with my laser so I have to show a separation between the letters as I cannot do color. This took me WAYYYYYY too long to figure out and I somehow can't replicate it. I'm usually pretty good at figuring things out but this has stumped me for the last 3 or 4 hours.
Please help!

[Monika Gause]

You can apply two strokes to the paths in the Appearance panel. Set the lower stroke to a larger width and opacity = 0%.

Then create the design and group all the strokes.

Set the group to Knockout group in the transparency panel.

For this to work with the laser, you need to expand it. Go to Object > flatten transparency. You need to outline paths an Keep alpha. Then also you need to clean this up: Use Merge in the Pathfinder panel. Afterwards select all the invisible paths and delete them.

A different method would be to create all the lines, expand the strokes, then use Object > Path > Offset path. Then select all of them and use the live paint tool to create the Overlaps. But this also needs to be expanded, then united with Merge and then invisible paths deleted.

In any case: find a method and get the necessary routine. Then this methog will be quick.

[Anubhav Majumder]

Hello @Brittney27766939lorx,

Thanks for reaching out. I hope the suggestions shared by Monika helped with the results you were trying to achieve. If not, kindly update this thread and share more information about the trouble you are having so we can assist you further.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Anubhav