How to Cross Electronic Circuit Wires Properly with Adobe Illustrator

In Adobe Illustrator, one of the most frustrating electronic circuit drawing element is two wires crossing each other likes this:

However, there is no Illustrator tool to draw the crossing as above, that is, the elegant way. When you use the Pen, Pencil or Line tool, what is produced is this:

Ugh! This is not only ugly, but unclear too, especially when the wires are of the same color. Do they intersect or jump over each other? That is an important piece of information that the viewers must have without any misinterpretations. So that’s how you can accomplish that by using Adobe Illustrator :

1) Draw a circle (the same color as the line that you want to jump over the other one) on top of the intersection. Make sure all three objects are centered well:

2) Make sure that the blue straight wire is sent all the way to the FRONT of the drawing:

3) Hover the direct selection tool (A) to verify that “intersection” label appears at those points where the circle intersects the straight line on top of it:

4) With the direct selection tool (A), select the bottom-half path of the circle.

 5) Press the Delete button to delete a quarter arc:

6) Repeat the procedure for the other quarter arc, to leave you with a half circle:

7) With the direct selection tool (A), select the straight line that is in between the end points of the circle, and then press Delete:

Now we will join the end points of the half-circle with two unconnected line segments. For that, make sure your FILL is  “None” (no fill).

8) With the direct selection tool (A), drag and select the circle-line-end-points pair on one side of the drawing and then press Ctrl+J to join the end points smoothly:

9) Repeat the same procedure for the other pair.

TIP: Sometimes you may need to grab one of the end points and manually drag it over the other point to have them join smoothly:

10) Here is the end result:

Congratulations!