Very often there is a need for filling a ring with color. The hole in the middle, however, must be transparent.

Especially when creating exploded view drawings with many rings, discs etc. you will be confronted with this task. You could use the mask function to achieve this effect, but this would enlarge the file size and requires further editing as soon as you move the part. The following will give you a more comfortable solution. Here is how you can do this.

First, create an element for example an ellipse fill this with white. Then create a smaller concentric ellipse this should also fill with white because of the former selection. Select both ellipses and then use the command: element > paths > create compound path. It should then be possible to see through the centre of the created element. This method is especially suitable when you want to export it into other file formats because it does not use any propriety techniques.