Combine two or more shapes

Create the shapes on which you want to apply the Shape Builder tool.

Select the Selection tool to select the paths you need to merge.

Double-click the Shape Builder tool to open the Shape Builder Tool Options dialog box, and set the Gap Detection, Selection, and Highlight options.

Select the Shape Builder tool.

Select the region you want to extract or break from the shape. Additional anchor points appear where the shapes break.

Drag along the desired region to merge and form a new shape. The art style of the new shape is determined by the following:

• The art style of the object where the mouse drag was initiated is applied to the merging shapes.
• If no art style is available on mouse down, then the art style available on mouse release is applied to the merging shapes.
• If no art style is available on mouse down or mouse release, then the art style of the topmost selected object in the Layers panel is applied.

Select Shift–click, and drag for a rectangular marquee, which allows you to easily merge multiple paths.

Press Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) to enter erase mode in the Shape Builder tool, and then select the closed region you want to delete. In the erase mode, you can delete regions within selected shapes or delete edges. If you delete a region shared by multiple objects, the shapes are broken so that the regions selected by the marquee are removed from the shapes.