Interweaving vines with 3D text

[Gare]

@Frances. Thanks for pointing that out. I truly didn't know that you could "opacity mask" using the Eraser.
So now you can do both destructive and non-destructive erasing. both are valuable depending on your intention.

@Dave—I don't know what your system specs are, but I am able to intersect a line blend of five steps with an ellipse. I'm attaching the file; why don't you try it when you have time to let your system hang. The bottom shape is he product of intersecting the blend lines with the ellipse.

Try this: once you have your Blend group of shapes the way you want them, select 'em and then press Ctrl+Shift+S (Arrange>convert to editable Shapes). This—mathematically—simplifies the group and you might get where you want to go then. The dynamic blend attribute is destroyed and the blend can't be edited any more. but the result is a group of 7 lines if you do 5 steps, and I think I was able to apply a boolean operation even back in version 4 with a Pentium box!

My Best,

Gary

Oh, and P.S. We're getting O/T again and I'm going to get screamed at for "poaching" activity and privatizing it on the Xara Xone thread. Please share with the entire community when you have a tip, or when you have a general question, cool?