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Well if at all possible, try to get your hands on the training videos from Total Training. It covers the basics and at the end get's pretty complex. It gives you a great start.
The combine command is probably the Join command in Illustrator, don't know about the punch (if you mean punching a hole in something), I just create another layer with the BG color, but I think there's a grouping command in the layers palette where you can give a layer a punch through setting. I really don't work with Illustrator all that much, just when I neew something traced quickly, then I just go back to Photoshop, so I'm probably not the best guy to advize you on it's usage.
"Playing" with the program is probably the best way to learn though (learning by doing, trial and error and so on).
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