Adobe Illustrator Help

[Hammerheadx]

To show how much of a beginner I am I pose the following question:

When tracing letters liks A, B, D, Q, etc that have a "hole" in them, what I currently do is fill the outline of the letter in , say black, and then fill the inside of the letter in, say white.  Works great except when you want to print on a background other than white, or a transparency.

There must be a simple way in Illustrator to trace the letter and then punch a hole in it.

[opt2not]

If these objects are shapes, that is, without strokes:
Select your black outline shape, and then the white hole shape you drew, and hit Ctrl-8  which joins the objects together. They must be in the same layer.
This command can be found under one of the drop-down menus too, I think it's in Objects--> Compound Paths --> join.  Something like that (I don't have Illustrator at work, so I can't check this for you).

This will take the white shape object and use it as a boolean object to poke the hole through the Black shape. 

[knohbody]

I always use the pathfinder pallette's subtract tool. the object on top will be subtracted from the lower object, then expand to make it permanent.
Heres a tutorial that explains the pathfinders features: http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/pathfinder-explained

[opt2not]

I always use the pathfinder pallette's subtract tool. the object on top will be subtracted from the lower object, then expand to make it permanent.
Heres a tutorial that explains the pathfinders features: http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/pathfinder-explained

Ah, good to know. I usually shy away from the UI, and try to learn the hot-keys in any software I use. Either way is good.  

[knohbody]

I always use the pathfinder pallette's subtract tool. the object on top will be subtracted from the lower object, then expand to make it permanent.
Heres a tutorial that explains the pathfinders features: http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/pathfinder-explained

Ah, good to know. I usually shy away from the UI, and try to learn the hot-keys in any software I use. Either way is good. 

Yeah, I learned to use the menus for stuff like that. Adobe allows you to change the hotkeys on just about everything in CS and when I was working in the computer lab at school, each station would have different hotkeys, depending on who would sit there that day.   

[Hammerheadx]

Thanks for all your assistance - this is of tremendous help!