remove white-space from blend while maintaining lines as strokes

Question

I am trying to make a laser cut pattern in illustrator and I want to make the following image etched into wood (red lines etched).

So, here is the rub. Right now those lines are just a blend under a white object. I need to get the image to be just strokes so that the robot can follow them. Somehow I need to get that image to just be simple strokes. I am sure there is some way to make an object, subtract out the white space and then add in a hatch then convert that to primitive line elements. But I have no idea where to begin.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

You can do this using the Pathfinder panel.

1. Create your lines.
2. Create your shape, convert it into a compound path and place it above the grouped lines.
3. Select both the lines and the shape and, on the Pathfinder panel, click Outline. This will effectively 'chop' your lines but won't remove the negative areas.
4. Select all of the resulting paths and add a stroke to them, to make them easier to work with.
5. Now, with the Direct Selection tool (A) or the Lasso tool (Q), select all of the paths you don't want and Delete them.

Alternatively, you can use the Shaper Tool.

1. Create your lines.
2. Create your shape, convert it into a compound path and place it above the grouped lines.
3. Now click the Shaper Tool in the Tools menu (or hit Shift+N), and simply draw little scribbles over the segments of the lines that you want to remove.

The nice thing about the Shaper tool is that it's non-destructive – the sections of the lines that you remove are still there (but hidden) until you go Object > Expand.

Answer 2

While pathfinder outline and sharper are nice, they both require you to do quite a lot of pruning. Using shape builder is actually faster here since it requires the least amount of manual dexterity on your part

1. Select the lines you want to participate in the cutting and cut.
2. Activate the shape builder tool (Shift + M)

3. Alt + Click or drag on line you do not want to keep.

   

   Image 1: Trim lines using shape builder.

The nice thing of this is that it does not dice the cutting curve so if you color the cutter with a different color then you can easily select all of them later with Select → Same → ...

Other similar related use case:

• Illustrator: how to reproduce line art