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I am trying to make a speech bubble. My attempt consists of a rectangle and then using the pen tool to establish three points. They are not filled and only have a border.

Here is what I have:

enter image description here

This is what I'm actually shooting for:

enter image description here

I don't see why the pathfinder tool can't remove that one line. Does anyone have any ideas, or am I going about this the wrong. I've worked with Photoshop for about two years, but only worked with Illustrator for a few weeks.

2 Answers 2

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1. First make the rectangle.

Then make the triangle. Make sure the triangle goes past the rectangles side.

enter image description here

2. Select both objects with Selection tool and then from the Path finder window click the first icon.

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Also, you could just as well make the Rectangle and then with pentool click 3 points side by side into the desired side of the rectangle, and move the middle point down with direct selection tool.

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  • D'oh! Just saw your edit. So much for my craftiness. ;)
    – Farray
    Commented Jun 20, 2012 at 16:21
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    @Farray The saying goes: The quick eat and the slow fight over the leftovers with pigeons.
    – Joonas
    Commented Jun 20, 2012 at 16:28
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    @Lollero And the very hungry eat the pigeons. :) Commented Jun 20, 2012 at 17:36
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The pathfinder will happily remove that line, but the anchors have to be lined up perfectly. I suspect your anchors may be off by a minor fraction of a point. Perhaps imperceptible at low zoom levels, but enough to tell Illustrator that they are not part of the same line.

The easy option is to make sure the objects overlap instead of trying to line the edges up. (I see Lollero's answer just popped up with this solution.)

Another option is to draw the rectangle, add 3 anchors to the bottom of it, then drag the center anchor lower.

enter image description here

Note that you are using a rounded stroke on your rectangle object but the stroke of the dangling portion is sharp. If you combine rely on the stroke to round your corners, they will be consistently round on the whole object. You are better off drawing a rounded-rectangle as Lollero demonstrated.

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