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Divide any shape with irregular line?


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As I continue learning, one thing I encounter and struggle with is trying to divide a shape with an irregular curve, so I can shade just one half. See attached screenshot for a rudimentary example. It's an ellipse, and a curve. I've got straight lines and ellipses figured out, but what do you do when it's an odd shape like this? For this example, I'd like one side of the ellipse to be red, the other blue. I've tried breaking the curve of the ellipse and joining the curve to the new broken points, and also tried just joining the curve to the edge of the ellipse, but it's not getting me where I want to go, since the wavy line is not connecting. 

 

It's gotta be easy, but I'm tired of searching. I can't find the answer, so I turn to the experts. :)

 

 

2020-02-06_15-45-51.jpeg

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Hello Cobalt7 Imaging,

Draw the line that should cut the shape, make it protrude on both sides of the shape, make it very thin (0.05pt).
The line always selected, "Layer", "Expand Stroke".
Then select the set, circle and line and do "Divide".
Delete the sections of the line and put the desired color on one of the halves of the shape. 

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There are other ways to do this besides using Expand Stroke. One is shown below.

1354174168_irregulardivide.jpg.b64603c98bd9f9e11fb71532f2ebf18e.jpg

Note that the exact shape of the two modified irregular lines does not matter. As long as each one completely encloses one part of the ellipse, you can add the nodes anywhere convenient.

Also note that to add the nodes to an existing line, you must first select one of its end nodes. This is easy to do with the Pen Tool active by holding down the modifier key (CMD on Macs) to temporarily switch to the Node Tool.

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@G13RL - Thanks! I had not seen that technique before, I tried it and it worked perfectly. Not very intuitive, so glad I asked. :)

@R C-R - and thank you, I remembered that technique after I posted. Thank for taking the time to detail for myself and others who may be searching too!

 

As a relative new comer, seems like a great 'feature' that could be added as a one step function. Not that either technique is real time consuming, but seems like something that needs to be more accessible. Tsk. 

Back to the grind! Thanks again.

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21 hours ago, Cobalt7 Imaging said:

As I continue learning, one thing I encounter and struggle with is trying to divide a shape with an irregular curve, so I can shade just one half. See attached screenshot for a rudimentary example. It's an ellipse, and a curve. I've got straight lines and ellipses figured out, but what do you do when it's an odd shape like this? For this example, I'd like one side of the ellipse to be red, the other blue. I've tried breaking the curve of the ellipse and joining the curve to the new broken points, and also tried just joining the curve to the edge of the ellipse, but it's not getting me where I want to go, since the wavy line is not connecting. 

"..... so I can shade just one half."

If the effect you describe is all you really want then you don't need to break, divide or join anything (those skills are good to have nevertheless 😉).

Remember that you can just throw the curve inside the circle (clipping it), extend the curve so it's volume covers that half of the circle and fill.

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