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Illustrator assisstance please

Normally if Ive needed to do some vector work in the past I would have used flash as its quick and easy. But we've had Illustrator here for a while so I thought id try it out this time. But Im still trying to do things the same way I would in flash.

So what Im trying to do is join a closed path to an open path.

Example - I have a star shape (closed) but I want to add a half circle (open) between the bottom two spikes and I want to be able to fill each part with a different colour.

So I draw my star, I draw my semi circle, line then up perfectly, click join and nothing but a big nasty message about joining paths which doesnt really mean much to me.

In flash, all i would do is draw the shapes, place them and delete any straggling bits.

So can any Illustrator buffs help me out? This is probably a really simple thing and its making me look real dumb, hehe, but you've got to learn sometime.

I thought Id ask here first as its hard finding specific answers whilst trawling through online tutorials.

Cheers ppl.

EDIT - BTW its Illustrator 10 Im using

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There's a panel in Illustrator called Pathfinder, which offers several options for multiple objects tasks. I'm sure you'll find something that helps you in it

The thing to remember with Illustrator is that everything you create has it's own self-contained set of properties and attributes.

In flash vectors seem to work more like raster graphics with their overlapping liquid kind of creation... in Illustrator they work more like cardboard cutouts. You create something and if you want it to be a part of something else you have to actually tell it implicitely to work as a part of that object.

Malephika is on the right track with the pathfinder. That will allow you options for adding, subtracting, dividing, etc. vector shapes and basically combining them into a larger more complex shape.

Once you get the basics of building in Illustrator, I think it's a MUCH better way to go than flash. It allows for more complex and reusable graphics than the editor in flash. Most of the people I know create their vectors in Illustrator or Freehand and then import them into flash so they can take advantage of the editing capabilities of the larger application.

In your specific example, it doesn't sound like you want one path though. You're talking about giving each piece a different attribute (different colors). So you want each to remain a separate vector but to act as one graphic. Here's the way to do that. Create your two shapes, give them each the color you want, then hit cmd+G (ctrl+G) to "group" the objects. They will move and act like one object, but retain their separate attributes (in this case the color).

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