Shape builder
Merge, erase and cut overlapping shapes by clicking or sweeping the faces and edges they form — no boolean groups, just one resulting path.
What it does
Shape builder looks at every selected shape and path together and splits them into the faces (enclosed areas) and edges (segments) they form where they overlap or cross. You then build the shape you want by clicking or sweeping those faces and edges directly on the canvas:
- click a face to fill it into the result,
- hold Alt and click a face to erase it,
- click an edge to stroke, separate or cut it.
Unlike boolean operations, the result is a single flat vector path — the original shapes are not kept as sub-layers. The topmost selected shape becomes the result and keeps its name, style and position in the layer list. Shapes you never touched survive unchanged.
Starting a session
- Select two or more overlapping shapes or vector paths (a single shape with self-intersections or crossing lines works too).
- Press ⇧M, or open the More menu on the vector edit toolbar and choose Shape builder.
Faces and edges highlight as you move over them. Faces that are already filled show as filled; open lines that cross the shapes are shown as construction lines.
Faces
| Gesture | Result |
|---|---|
| Click a face | Fill it — the face merges into the result |
| Click a filled face | Unfill it |
| Alt + click a face | Erase it — the area is removed from the result |
| Drag across faces | Fill every face the sweep crosses |
| Alt + drag | Erase every face the sweep crosses |
A merged result takes the fill of the topmost shape. Building a face is not a request for paint: if every selected shape was stroke-only, the result stays stroke-only — the faces you built show as outlines, and you give them a fill afterwards from the Fill section of the inspector.
Edges
| Gesture | On a closed shape's segment | On a construction line |
|---|---|---|
| Click | Toggle the stroke of that segment | Separate the segment into its own path |
| Alt + click | Remove the stroke of that segment | Cut the segment away |
| Drag across | — | Separate (or, with Alt, cut) every crossed segment |
Edges win over faces when the pointer is within a few pixels of one, so a line that splits a face stays clickable. Inside a very small face the edge pick radius shrinks so the face itself can still be clicked.
Options
The vector edit toolbar shows the Shape builder options while a session is active:
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
| Clicking stroke splits the path | On (default): edges are targets as described above. Off: only faces respond; edges are left alone. |
| Gap detection | Off / Small (3 px) / Medium (6 px) / Large (12 px), or type your own length in the box next to the menu. Open endpoints closer than this to another path are bridged with a straight segment, so a nearly closed outline still encloses a face. The bridge is never a stroke or a path of its own. The length is in document pixels, not screen pixels, so zooming does not change it. Change the value and the faces are recomputed straight away. |
Finishing
- Press Enter or Escape, or leave the tool. Both finish the session and keep what you built.
- Faces you filled or erased become the result path. Faces you never touched stay as they were. Leftover pieces of construction lines become their own paths, styled like the line they came from — including a variable stroke width, remapped onto the part of the line that survived the cut.
- Rounded corners are used exactly as you see them: a corner radius is part of the geometry the faces and edges are built from, so the result keeps the rounding instead of snapping back to a sharp corner.
- The result is selected when you finish. One ⌘Z undoes the whole session — also when you entered it from vector edit mode.
Tips
- Draw a few crossing lines over a shape, then erase the slices you don't need — a quick way to cut a shape apart.
- Turn Gap detection on when you sketch outlines that don't quite meet; the bridged segment becomes part of the resulting outline.
- Turn Clicking stroke splits the path off when working on a dense drawing and you only want to fill and erase faces.
- Boolean operations keep the originals live and editable; use Shape builder when you want one flat path you can keep editing with the pen and anchor tools.