Cutting joined up (script sytle) letters from Illustrator

[Warren Beard]

quote Toby Lanham:

Hi All,
Can anyone help?
I tried to cut some script style / joined up letters from Illustrator, but when it cuts them the cutter separates each letter with a cut.
Can someone tell me the function to remove these cuts or merge them so they are one?

I have got around it by saving the .ai as a .pdf, then importing back to Illustrator, and then live tracing which works well, but im sure there is a function that I dont know about.

Thanks in advance!

Toby.

you said it mate, "merge" the text after you have converted it to outlines, you’ll find the function under pathfinder tools.

cheers

Warren

[Toby Lanham]

Thanks Mate,

Knew it would be something easy!

Toby.

[Toby Lanham]

Just had to do some more script signage, but when I followed the instructions, it removed the white bits in the ‘O’s & ‘D’s etc.. any thoughts?

Thanks

Toby

[Jill Marie Welsh]

I only know Corel, but the missing centers sometimes happen if I weld after converting to curves. Or something like that.
Do you have a "combine" option?
Love….Jill

[Martin Pearson]

They are probably still there but are now solid shapes rather than holes, if you have a wireframe mode try that to see. Like Jill says you will probably have to combine them with the rest of the text.

Sorry don’t use illustrator either but a lot of vector programs work in a similar way.

[Dan Osterbery]

Hi Toby,
get your text in illy, select it all, convert it to curves and then merge it, and it should be fine!

cheers

Dan

[Andrew Charman]

As Dan says but the tool you need to merge it is "add to shape area" in the Pathfinder palette. After this make it a compound path (in the "Object" menu).

[Gareth Hankinson]

if that doesnt work what i do is merge the outlines then under the object tab press Expand or Expand appearance then check the preview to make sure it has worked.

[Andrew Charman]

On the Mac I hold down the option key while I select "add to shape area". This does the expanding part at the same time.

[Toby Lanham]

Thanks all, Will try it this week and let ya know!

[OwenTaylor]

After you have ‘created outlines’ you might need to ungroup the text to allow the merge function to work. If you are losing the cutouts it sounds like you are releasing the compound paths first or using the ‘minus back’ tool rather than ‘merge’.

Owen