How to turn the white colour portion to transparent

Question

I got this map icon in work in illustrator, and would like to turn those white dash line and the white outline of the location mark to transparent. Can you please advise me how to do it? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Okay, the answer given by Chris is pretty legit but it seems like you are quite new to illustrator ...So this is somewhat detailed explanation

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So in your particular case, both dashed line and the outline of the map marker should be done in separate ways to achieve the effect you want

So let's start with the dashed line on the road,

Step 1: Select the dashed line ,then Object > Path > Outline Stroke .this will make your dashed lines to a single object

step 2:select objects of both road and the dashed line .Now you need pathfinder tools ( if it's not in you hud it can be turned on from window->Pathfinder) in this pathfinder window click the 'minus front' option (the marked one in the image below)

Icon of this tool is pretty self-explanatory ,it substracts top layer from the bottom layer

so that'll do the job for the dashed line

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Now for the map marker ... The method is almost similar

Here you must select both 'Map Object' and 'map marker object' , select Object > Path > Outline Stroke

open layers and you will find that your maps marker will be changed to a group consisting of two objects one object of outline and other will be the fill color ..

here select the map object and the outline object or map marker .now do same as step two in the previous case..After doing this sometimes the order of layers may mess up, so you could simply reorder it in layers menu (or by using the shortcut cntrl+[ or cntrl+] )

hope this helps

Answer 2

Outline your strokes (Object > Path > Outline Stroke) so that the offset lines and the dotted lines become shapes and then use pathfinder (probably the minus front function) to knock those shapes our of the underlying elements. You may need to duplicate some of the shapes in place before applying the pathfinder tool. There are several ways to approach this so you may need to experiment a little, but the above steps will get you there.