3.3 Combining Areas to Create New Shapes

Areas can be used to quickly construct complex Shapes from simple shapes such as circles and squares. To create a new complex Shape by combining Areas:

1. Using Shapes, construct the Areas to be combined.
2. Call the appropriate Boolean operators: add, subtract, intersect, exclusiveOr.

For example, CAG could be used to create a pear like that shown in Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2 Pear constructed from circles

The body of the pear is constructed by performing a union operation on two overlapping Areas: a circle and an oval. The leaves are each created by performing an intersection on two overlapping circles and then joined into a single Shape through a union operation. Overlapping circles are also used to construct the stem through two subtraction operations.