Merging Shapes

[barclayb19995441]

I've been making ornaments all week for cutting with my laser.  A friend wanted a different design and so I created this artwork, butterfly is from image trace. Normally when I'm done I just select all the artwork and merge it all and it works perfect but this new file is merging some and not others and I get overlapping shapes and I can't figure out what's going on.  Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks

here is the file

[Monika Gause]

You merged it by clicking on "Merge"? For that to work, they would need to be exactly the same color, but they aren't. Some are RGBblack and some are greyscale black. Correct that first and then Merge will work.

You will need to delete some invisible objects as well.

[barclayb19995441]

Wow, I had no idea on that, thanks so much.  Is was able to fix it but was wondering if there was a fast way to change the colors to match?  Also, you mentioned deleting some invisible objects, can you tell me how/what your talking about?  Thanks

[Monika Gause]

To correct color fast, you can use Edit > Edit colors > Recolor artwork. Please read the documentation as it is a complex function.

As for deleting invisible artwork: there are already such paths in your file. What you can do: draw a rectangle that has no fill/no stroke and then Select > Same > fill & stroke. Then delete.

[barclayb19995441]

Wow, awesome thanks.  that works but how did you find/recognize that there were a bunch of extra paths when you opened my file? 

[Monika Gause]

I have seen them in the layers panel.

And I suspected that there might be some. Although I did not know for sure what you already did in that image, I suspected that there might have been the pathfinder Merge applied. And it will produce this stuff in about 80% of cases.

[barclayb19995441]

Yep your right, thanks for the help.  I appreciate your help.