Stroke/border around objects

[PPedroso]

Hi,

What I am trying to achieve is a single gray stroke/border around two overlapping rectangles which are different colours.

I don't want the stroke going through any of the overlapping areas.

I can't do it in pathfinder because it changes the colours to all one colour. I believe there is a way to do it by joining layers but I can't figure it out.

I've found that i'm not the only one with this question, and there is a guy who has draw the question:

http://www.markflint.net/illustrator_question.gif

Advanced Thanks to everyone

[d_tekt]

Simplest way would be to copy both rectangles, paste behind, merge and add a heavy stroke. Probably group the whole lot if you're moving it around.

[Scott Weichert]

Group the rectangles then add a new stroke in the appearance panel. Move the stroke below the "contents" in the panel, and set the stroke color and size how you like.

[PPedroso]

Group the rectangles then add a new stroke in the appearance panel. Move the stroke below the "contents" in the panel, and set the stroke color and size how you like.

Really thanks Scott, you helped me on this one, very thanks.

Besides that techinque that you thaught, is there another one?

I'm asking this because i've already done something like this and obtain the follow result:

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/2721/novocartaoum6.th.jpg (http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=novocartaoum6.jpg)

As you can see, in the first image i draw the stroke yellow and blue by hand (it really sucks), and in the second image i have used some techinque to do that, but i really don't remember what i have done. The only thing that i remember is that the yellow and blue part were a single object with the form of the original object, it had is own fill and stroke, but didn't have the filled paths, only the outside.

Can you tell how i did that (really sorry...)?