Issues with knockout

[unknownsailor]

Hi,

I have a design made up of multiple layers.

I am trying to make the shapes that are filled in white transparent, where they keep their black outline but don't show the layers underneath. I believe knockout is the way to go so I can manage the inner white circle no problem by selecting Minus Front under Pathfinder...

The first problem I have is dealing with the white waves. When I apply a knockout on this it loses the outline where the lower part of the wave intersects the knocked out circle:

How do I knockout but maintain the outline?

The next problem is trying to knockout the sails. I have tried to select both outer and inner black circles and then the sail:

Or I try to group the black circles and do the same with the same result. It works ok if I just select the inner circle (minus the outline problem):

Any pointers gratefully received as I have spent a few hours trying to get my head around this!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Select an object with a white fill and focus the fill. Then Select > Same > Fill.

In the appearance panel set the fill to 0% opacity.

Then group all your objects

Select he group and in the transparency panel set it to knockout group.

At this point you might need to set View > Preview on CPU

To make all this into paths, you need to Object > Flatten transparency

Check "Outline strokes" and "Keep alpha transparency"

In the result delete all invisible objects.

[unknownsailor]

Hi Monika, thanks for your reply, Could you just clarify what you mean by ''focus the fill"?

[unknownsailor]

OK, scrap my last comment. I got it sorted. Thank you so much for this help, Monika, it works a treat. Just to note after ungrouping my object I then selected each path in turn and made the following changes. Thanks once again!

[time18]

You Could select all of the inner elements and use Pathfinder > Divide, whoch will split all of the elements to separate manageble shapes.

You can bring some back together using Pathfinder where it may have split too much.