3

Now I am working on compound paths and I need to remove all the redundant anchor points: so I press - and click some of them, but other ones are constantly disappearing, so I should click on V and click the path and - again, which is very disturbing.

Is there any way to make ALL the anchor points visible ALL the times? I don't speak about Cmd+H of course.

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  • Not really following. If you select an object with multiple anchors, then use the Delete Anchor Tool (-) to click one of the anchors, all the remaining anchors are still visible, they simply change to "hollow" anchors since they aren't specifically selected. But all anchors are still visible.
    – Scott
    Dec 28, 2013 at 17:41
  • actually, in my case, only those anchor point are visible which are in the "closed" part of the compound path where the last point was deleted, but all the other anchor points of the same compound path are invisible until I select the compound pass by clicking on it.
    – Ilan
    Dec 28, 2013 at 17:46
  • Sorry I missed the "compound path" part of your question.
    – Scott
    Dec 28, 2013 at 18:01
  • IIRC, there should be a 'keyline' mode to view your art board as. This is essentially a wireframe showing the mechanicals of all elements at once.
    – DA01
    Jan 27, 2014 at 18:22
  • I didnt find something like keyline mode unfortunately
    – Ilan
    Jan 27, 2014 at 21:55

3 Answers 3

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Compound paths are different. Since you can only delete a single point on one path at a time with the Delete Anchor Tool, you have to work on one path at a time. You can't work on one path and keep other paths selected/highlighted.

If you want to delete anchors on multiple paths, simply select the anchors with the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow). You can Shift+CLICK to select anchors anywhere, even on multiple paths, and then click the Delete Anchor button on the control panel:

delete anchors

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  • I've tried it just a few seconds ago (SHIFT CLICK on multiple points) and the results are absolutely unexpected - I lost all my compound path eventually. Will investigate it deeper.
    – Ilan
    Dec 28, 2013 at 18:42
  • Compound paths work differently. It is often required that you work on only one part of the path at a time. I don't fully understand why you need to see anchor points on an unrelated part of the compound path.
    – Scott
    Dec 28, 2013 at 18:43
  • after UNITE operation I need to delete redundant anchors throughout the whole compound path, so there are not unrelated parts....
    – Ilan
    Dec 28, 2013 at 19:12
  • Have you tried selecting the object and using Object > Path > Simplify?
    – Scott
    Dec 28, 2013 at 19:22
2

The goal of the question was to perform anchor points manipulations without loosing selection of different parts of compound objects or different objects. This type of selection is impossible.

However, I found very handy solution:

After selecting the Instrument (let's say Remove Anchor Point) we can easily temporary switch to Selection tool pressing Command/Control button and selecting the desired object, then leaving the button returning the selecting Instrument. That worked for me.

2

Try this for Mac. Go to the upper pannel, choose Illustrator -> Preferences -> Selection & Anchor Display..., after that, select: show handles when mutiple anchors are selected!

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