Joining large amounts of lines, quick

I've been trying to use this somewhat unintuitive program for about a month now and I still can't join lines in a quick manner to form a shape, which can be filled.

I've tried googling for tutorials on this, but they basically all say that two endpoints have to be joined. I have finally somewhat mastered this by first drawing with the pen or line tool and then using direct-selection tool, then join.

While the pen tool allows you to continue on the anchor point, I think, the line tool just forms a separate line. Most of the time I want to move around the entire line drawn with the pen tool too before forming the shape, so I just want to join the separate (small) shapes at the very end of the drawing process.

The problem: Is there a way to quickly join a set of lines, so that I won't have to sit and laboriously join each individual line segment in a large drawing?

If I just box-select a large amount of lines, I get the normal "You need to select two endpoints or else I'll come to your house and shank your dog". The other alternative is the Live Paint-tool, which is too inflexible. So, is there a solution for this?

the problem maybe - how does the program know which ends connect to which if there is more than one possibility?

or perhaps I am misunderstanding you ?

welcome to TG :)

Like Steve I am not sure quite what you want here. If you draw a line and want to put extra anchor points into that line to make a shape then you use the Pen Tool with the + sign on it(see first illustration). With the line selected, select the Pen Tool with the + and click away. Then select the Direct Selection tool (3rd illusration) and swing the points around till you get the right shape, please make sure that the fill is selected (see 2nd illustration).

The line tool only draws individual lines if you want to combine those lines into a shape then you would select the line that you want to join, select Object and move down to Path and then out to Join. This way may join your lines together but the main way of making a shape is to use the Pen Tool ( 4th illustration) and not the Line Tool. If it is only straight lines that you want then you might want to change any curved lines to straight by using the Angled pen Tool (shown in the 5th illustration)

If you cant get the info from my answer why not post your shape that you want to achieve so that we can give you the best solution and welcome to Talkgrapics.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Albacore

....the Angled pen Tool (shown in the 5th illustration)
If you cant get the info from my answer why not post your shape that you want to achieve so that we can give you the best solution and welcome to Talkgrapics.

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First, thank you for pointing out the Angled Pen Tool. Second, I'll rephrase the question and accompany it with an illustration of what I'm trying to do as soon as possible.

Just stumbled upon TG, seems friendly enough :o

from what you are saying it sounds like all you need to do is select the lines you wanna join with the white selection tool an press ctrl+j to join, works everytime for me!!!

Hi stafism welcome

I'm sure it does work everytime

That after all is what is meant by joining two endpoints ;)

But you can only do it two lines at a time - right?

Or do you know something I don't :D

I think they have forgotten that they have posted here! Using the join command with the direct selection tool you can only join to end points at one time.