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About overlapping shapes in Flash

When you use the Pencil, Line, Oval, Rectangle, or Brush tool to draw a line across another line or painted shape, the overlapping lines are divided into segments at the intersection points. You can use the Arrow tool to select, move, and reshape each segment individually.

Note: Overlapping lines that you create with the Pen tool do not divide into individual segments at intersection points, but remain connected. See Using the Pen tool.

A fill; the fill with a line drawn through it; and the two fills and three line segments created by segmentation

When you paint on top of shapes and lines, the portion underneath is replaced by whatever is on top. Paint of the same color merges together. Paint of different colors remains distinct. You can use these features to create masks, cutouts, and other negative images. For example, the cutout below was made by moving the ungrouped kite image onto the green shape, deselecting the kite, and then moving the filled portions of the kite away from the green shape.

To avoid inadvertently altering shapes and lines by overlapping them, you can group the shapes or use layers to separate them. See Grouping objects and Using layers.