
Use your Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) to switch the tool to subtract. Drag the Shape Builder tool across shapes you want to add together. Once you have your shapes arranged, you will use the Shape Builder to add shapes together and subtract shapes from other shapes. Using simple shapes to build your objects guarantees that you will have nice curves, symmetry and most ’s simple! To actually draw a mug with one of the drawing tools would be fairly difficult unless you had extensive knowledge of the pen tool. Next the shapes are put together to form what will be a mug. Adobe added the Shape Builder tool as a more intuitive alternative to the Pathfinder.īelow is an graphic broken down into it’s most basic shapes-several ovals and a rectangle.

If you are already familiar with Illustrator, you probably already knew there was a way to do this with the Pathfinder panel in older versions of the program. This particular tool has the ability to combine and separate shapes.

One of the great tools introduced in Adobe Illustrator CS5 was the the Shape Builder tool.
