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evanc15748400
Participating Frequently
December 7, 2017
Answered

Merging Objects Without Changing Stroke Thickness?

  • December 7, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 4955 views

I am trying to merge two circles together.  However, when I do this, the stroke thickness of the inner circle always becomes thinner.  Is there any way to merge these two objects while maintaining the stroke thickness?

I'm fairly new to Illustrator.  I've tried different things, like Expanding, but nothing seems to work.

1) The thickness I want:

2) The thickness after merging the circles:

    Correct answer JETalmage

    One of the chronic annoyances which has always plagued Illustrator is its sometimes goofy handling of strokes as opposed to fills. Pathfinder functions are one example. Merge works on fills and removes strokes. So...

    1. Select all.

    2. Object>Path>Outline Stroke.

    3.Pathfinder palette: Merge. You now have a Group which contains only filled paths.

    4. White Pointer: Select one of the black areas.

    5. Select Menu: Same>Fill Color.

    6. Delete.

    JET

    1 reply

    Doug A Roberts
    Community Expert
    Doug A RobertsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 7, 2017

    what does 'merging' mean in this instance? what are you trying to accomplish?

    E
    evanc15748400Author
    Participating Frequently
    December 7, 2017

    I'm trying to use merge in pathfinder to essentially create one circle from the two circles (yellow circle with black outline and white circle with black outline).  So I want the appearance to be the same, but to only have one object.

    Using a Photoshop analogy, I want to "merge down," or flatten, the images to create one.  I realize Illustrator doesn't work the same way, so I'm trying my best to find a similar result.

    I hope that makes sense.

    Doug A Roberts
    Community Expert
    Doug A RobertsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 7, 2017

    right. so you have this structure (in outline mode)?

    what sort of scale is this? in the pathfinder panel menu, if you select Pathfinder options, does altering the precision change anything?

    also, what are you hoping to achieve by merging these shapes? do you need to for some reason? there's no 'merging' happening here really, all merge will do in this scenario is remove the black under the coloured shapes and create a group from the remainder. merge only really has an effect when you have discrete overlapping objects with the same fill colour.

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