Cutting objects

Objects can be easily cut up in various ways using the Knife Tool or a Divide Boolean operation.

Cutting objects before
Cutting objects after
Knife Tool: (A) Single-stroke cut and delete, (B) Intersecting multi-stroke cut and delete, (C) Single-stroke cut and separate, (D) Multi-stroke cut and recolor of fragments.
Cutting curves before
Cutting curves after
Knife Tool: (A) Cutting a single curve with two one-click scissor cuts and (B) cutting multiple straight lines simultaneously using a single-stroke cut. Unwanted curve fragment(s) are subsequently deleted in both.
Cutting objects before
Cutting objects after
Divide Boolean operation: splitting an object with a Bézier curve (drawn with the Pen Tool).

About cutting

Two techniques are possible using different features:

For either technique, instead of repositioning, reshaping or deleting specific fragments after cutting, you can simply recolor each fragment independently.

Cutting works irrespective of layers. You can cut across any selection of objects as long as the selection is in place.

About partial cutting

Partially cutting into an object will create a split, i.e. a 'closed up' cut with each side of the cut touching. The appearance is of a single stroke but editing either curve (by moving overlapped/overlapping node apart) will open the cut.

Intersecting cuts

When you draw a series of separate strokes that intersect each other, you create a polycurve that cuts out the underlying object.

Knife Tool Move Tool To cut shapes (Knife Tool):
  1. From the Pencil Tool flyout, select the Knife Tool.
  2. Straight Line (Optional) Cut with a straight line by enabling Straight Line on the context toolbar before you drag. By default, you'll cut using a drawn freehand line.
  3. (Optional) For drawn freehand lines, check Stabilizer on the tool's context toolbar to draw smoothed lines using a Rope Mode or Windows Mode; use the former for redirecting a smoothed path using a draggable rope that can introduce sharp corners; the latter for a consistently smooth curve.
  4. Drag the cursor across the shape.
  5. With the Move Tool enabled, do any of the following:
    • Drag the newly split fragments apart after reselection.
    • Delete an unwanted fragment by pressing the , clicking a fragment, then pressing the .
    • Select a fragment and recolor with the Color panel.
Knife Tool To cut curves (Knife Tool):
  1. From the Pencil Tool flyout, select the Knife Tool.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • For a knife cut (creating separate curves): Drag the cursor across the curve.
    • For a scissor cut (creating a polycurve): Hover over a selected curve's target node or anywhere along a curve segment, then click to make the cut. The cursor will change to a scissors cursor.

      Use Separate Curves via Layer >Geometry and the Move Tool to create separate curves from the polycurve, then reposition the curves independently.

  3. With the pressed, edit the curve(s) (Node Tool behavior) or press the additionally to delete an unwanted segment on clicking.
Pen Tool Move Tool Divide To cut objects using Bézier curves (Divide Boolean operation):
  1. With the Pen Tool, draw a Bézier curve(s) over an object.
  2. With the Move Tool, select the curve(s) and the underlying object.
  3. On the Toolbar, select Divide.

The Divide operation will remove the pen strokes by default, although you can retain them by pressing the during the Divide operation.

SEE ALSO: