Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

How to use the Shape Builder Tool.

Quick reference

Shape Builder Tools

How to use the Shape Builder Tool.

When to use

Anytime you wish to join shapes together, or create entirely new shapes from separate ones, the Shape Builder Tool is a perfect tool for the job. This can be great for creating things like badges or containers similar to what you might see in a logo design.

Instructions

  • Begin by opening the Shape Builder Tool - Exercise.ai file
  • In the Illustrator file, you will notice that in the first row you have a rectangle, then a hexagon, and in the second row a circle, then a rectangle.
  • Use your Selection Tool (V) to grab the hexagon in the first row, and hold down the Shift Key while dragging it over to the left so that the top and bottom of the shape line up with the top and bottom of the rectangle.
  • Then, hold down the Alt/Option+Shift keys and drag a copy of the hexagon all the way to the other side so that you have one copy on both sides of the rectangle.
  • Use your Selection Tool to click and drag around all three of these shapes so that they are selected simultaneously. 
  • Next, grab the Shape Builder Tool from the toolbar.
  • Click inside of the hexagon shape all the way to the left and notice how a small grid appears inside of the shape.
  • As you proceed to click and drag towards the right you will notice that there is a red bounding box around the shapes.
  • Drag all the way across to the far right hexagon and then release the cursor.
  • You have now joined these three shapes together and unified them into one single shape.
  • From here you can use the Selection Tool, Free Transform Tool, Rotate Tool etc. to modify this shape without having to select the three individual shapes that we started with.
  • Try the same thing with the circle and the rectangle in the second row.

Hints

  • The keyboard shortcut for the Shape Builder Tool is Shift+M on the keyboard.
  • You can use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select any points from a merged shape to further modify or tweak the appearance of the shape once it has been unified.
  • You can also use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to round a corner if you have a shape with a hard edge that you want to change.
Login to download
  • 00:04 Now, anytime that you're working in Adobe Illustrator and
  • 00:07 you're working with things like shapes, whether they're geometric shapes or
  • 00:10 organic shapes, there's a few different ways that you can combine them together.
  • 00:15 So let's say we had something like this hexagon here and
  • 00:18 we wanted to put a rectangle on top of it.
  • 00:21 Well, I can select this rectangle and I can extend it like this, and
  • 00:25 it kind of looks like these shapes are together.
  • 00:26 Although when we click on them, you can tell that they are still separate.
  • 00:31 So I'm gonna select the hexagon on the end and hold down the Alt,
  • 00:34 Option and Shift keys and then drag a copy all the way to the other side over here.
  • 00:40 Now once I have these shapes together, I've basically got my three shapes.
  • 00:44 And what we're going to do here is something called the Shape Builder Tool
  • 00:48 which can be found over here in the tool bar or
  • 00:50 by pressing shift and M on the keyboard.
  • 00:52 And it basically looks like these two overlapping circles with a dash
  • 00:56 line and an arrow.
  • 00:58 So while I still have my shape selected, you can see that as I move my cursor
  • 01:01 around, it's kind of changing into a little bit of a grid.
  • 01:05 And what that's doing is if I click inside of one of these shapes, that grid is going
  • 01:09 to become red, as I move over into these other shapes over here.
  • 01:14 So now, I've joined these three shapes on the end.
  • 01:18 But not this shape all the way over here, not our last hexagon.
  • 01:22 So what I'll have to do is select the shapes again, grab my shape builder tool,
  • 01:26 and I'll click and drag all the way across to combine those shapes into one.
  • 01:31 And now when I select this, I have the ability to modify it as one joined shape.
  • 01:37 And if I grab my direct selection tool,
  • 01:40 I can select any of these points to extend it.
  • 01:43 Or I can even grab these and round the corner if I wanted to.
  • 01:48 Okay, so the shape builder tool is a great way to kind of merge and
  • 01:51 combine some of these shapes together.
  • 01:53 So let's try that again with another shape.
  • 01:56 If I grab my Ellipse tool and hold down Shift, I can drag out a circle.
  • 02:00 And then, over here I'm gonna grab my Rectangle tool, and
  • 02:04 just draw a rectangle kind of on top.
  • 02:07 So again, by default, these are gonna be two different shapes.
  • 02:11 But if I didn't wanna have to select both of them every time by holding down
  • 02:14 the Shift key and clicking on them, I can just select both,
  • 02:17 grab my shape builder tool, and click and drag to join them together.
  • 02:22 So it's a really handy tool if you just wanted to build out
  • 02:25 some more complex shapes without having to select them individually.
  • 02:29 And its just one way that we can use to combine things together
  • 02:32 in Adobe Illustrator.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course