Paths in InDesign won't fill as I wish

[Steve Fermor]

Can somebody help me with this before I just self destruct or something.

I am trying to make a compound path of a circular banner and fill it black, but I can make no sense of the pathfinder facilities and to be honest I never have. I find them illogical and unblievably complex. I have been hours on this theoretically easy task and I have got nowhere.

The banner is one circle inside another, with both paths cut and some straight end pieces added. I have made the inner circle and corners into a compound path which you can see in green, and have tried every method I can to join the outer ring (in red) to the green path to make one compound path. it fills the entire shape black and leaves a corner triangle with a hole.

What am I doing wrong? Why is it so hard?

Thanks in advance.

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from cc desktop">

[RvdT]

Looks like you have to join the anchor points. 

Select all the anchor points and press Ctrl+J

and/or remove duplicate anchor points.
you have to ungroup before joining. 

it's easier/better to draw/create such shapes in Adobe Illustrator.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

FWIW, pretty much all vector drawing procedures are the same, across various apps (especially Adobe apps), so there may be some assumption that an InDesign user knows the details from, say, experinence in Illustrator.

That said, InDesign's vector graphics tools are like many of its "helper" features: based on those of more powerful Adobe tools, but a bit on the simple and sketchy side, without the full array of features and (for want of a better word) "assistance" those tools bring. As suggested, it might be better to do this work in Illustrator, which is far more powerful and intuitive in this area and probably has better help and tutorials, and then import the result into InDesign. That's ID's real purpose and strength: to integrate the specialized graphics and productions of other tools for more complex layout and publication. The many simple tool sets it has are more for quick convenience than primary creation... as you've found.

[rob day]

Hi @Steve Fermor , As @RvdT points out, you have 2 paths that need to be joined—you don’t need to create a Compound Path

The InDesign Join command:

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

It's often easier to overlay shapes and substract one from the other than to draw a shape point by point. What you're after is a good example:

1. Draw two circles, select them and create a compound path. Apply a colour.

2. Overlay a rectangle, select both, and do Subtract in the Pathfinder panel.

[Steve Fermor]

Hi Peter,

Many thanks. I'll be trying that one out!