ShapeShifter Deep Dive

ShapeShifter Basics

Combining Shapes

Combine two or more shapes into a single shape.

Slicing a Shape

Except a portion of a shape.

Compound Shapes

Similar to slicing, if a shape is entirely contained within another shape it can be ignored by a pocket or treated as part of the inside of the larger shape.

Keep Existing Shapes

You can always preserve the shapes you have by selecting Keep Existing Shapes at the bottom of the ShapeShifter interface. This will make a copy of the selection and allow you to utilize your shapes repeatedly.

Use Cases

Rounding Corners

To round a corner you can place a circle to the needed diameter, move it tangent to the corner, and cut the corner to round it out.

Lettering

Most fonts in Studio create text as a compound shape, which means that Studio and Origin will understand the inside and outside shapes of the text without needing to use ShapeShifter to define those inside/outside shapes. There are only a few fonts that don't do this automatically. To see a list of fonts that don't employ compound shapes, click here.

If you have text that hasn't defined the inside and outside, you can use ShapeShifter to rectify this before placing the text on Origin:

Note that once lettering is ShapeShifted it cannot be edited for spelling or font type.

To make overlapping cursive text, place the text using a script font (like ‘Vibur’) then click a single block of text and click ShapeShifter. Select the inside of all letters and any overlapping shapes (using “Select All” may be faster), pass or deselect the unwanted internal areas, and then “Make Shape.” The result will be contiguous cursive text:

Retrieving a Shape

Since ShapeShifter can duplicate a shift you can retrieve a shape from a previously shifted or grouped paths.

Drawing

ShapeShifter can create complex drawings out of simple, overlapping shapes. If a particular drawing isn’t available in the Find Art library, you may be able to create it using circles, ellipses, rectangles, and polygons.

Using ShapeShifter to Clean Up Your File

Files created in third party design software can sometimes include artifacts or duplicate paths. In this video, Sam demonstrates how you can use ShapeShifter to identify and remove unwanted paths that may not be initially obvious.