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New “Cleanup Tool” plugin

The new Cleanup Tool plugin is available now!

You’ll probably find this most useful if you sometimes need to clean up CAD or GIS files, or tidy up artwork done by “other” people.

modifying an ellipse

Click:

  • On an endpoint or intermediate anchor point to delete it
  • On a path segment to add an anchor point

Shift click:

  • On an endpoint or intermediate anchor point to make it a corner point and collapse its handles
  • On a control point to make its anchor a corner point (no change in the location of the control points)
  • On a path segment to make the adjoining anchor points corner points and collapse the control handles for that segment

Option/Alt click:

  • On an endpoint to extend its control handle
  • On an intermediate anchor point to make it a smooth point and rotate the control handles to become tangent
  • On a control point to rotate it to become tangent to the adjacent segment’s control handle
  • On a path segment to make its anchor points smooth, extend the control handles, and rotate the handles to become tangent to adjacent beziers

Shift-Option/Alt click:

  • On an endpoint does nothing
  • On an intermediate anchor point toggles it between a corner and smooth point
  • On a control point toggles its anchor point between a corner and smooth point

Don’t want to memorize modifier keys? No problem, just select the option to display help text showing your options for whatever you’re doing!

So, essentially, clicking adds/deletes points, shift clicks make things angular, Option/Alt clicks make things smooth, and shift-option toggles them.

assimilate paths

When the tool’s cursor is over a selected path, its control handles will be highlighted even if Illustrator currently doesn’t display them, and anchor points will be marked with a square for corner points or a circle for smooth points.

Dragging a control handle adjusts it, constrained to its original angle.

Dragging a selected anchor point will move it, constrained to the path’s tangent angle, even if it’s under other art objects.

Shift-drag a control point or anchor point to constrain its movement to each increment of 45 degrees.

adjusting control handlessmoothing control handles

Drag a segment to find another path to assimilate and a smoothed segment will be added connecting the two paths.

Available now for Adobe Illustrator CS6 through CC 2018, Mac or Windows. From $10, or FREE for Productivity Pack licenses.

Finding and removing redundant, overlapping paths

overlapping paths

Finding duplicate paths is really fairly simple

Someday there’ll be a plugin to find and remove duplicate/redundant paths (perhaps I’ll write it, or perhaps there already is but I just don’t know about it). The most important decision in doing that, as I see it, is deciding which path is the primary one and which paths or segments are superfluous. The best way I found to identify and weed them out is to set all suspect paths’ opacity to about 40% to make overlapping paths pretty obvious. Be careful not to set the layer’s opacity instead, as that would cause all paths to become equally translucent, defeating the purpose of this exercise. In this screen capture of an imported GIS file of railroads near Trenton, New Jersey, the pale green lines farther north are single lines that show their increased density where they cross. If it were only always this easy.

The document info panel tells me that there are four open paths and three closed paths in the red east-west section, which explains its darker shade. In a map, multiple lines usually indicate multiple parallel tracks, so they’d rarely have exact duplicate segments, just similar slightly-offset paths. Sometimes cartographers would want to show parallel lines by exaggerating their spacing, especially if the lines are owned by different railroads. If it’s double track or a passing siding, it may be more detail than the map warrants. When one path is sufficient, I found it easiest to locate and pare these path pile-ups down with Smart Guides on, but feel free to use whatever method works for you (who’s to know—who’s to judge—does that really matter?).

What if the cleanup is just too much busywork?

Sometimes, as much as we’d like to optimize our art, there are times when thorough cleanup just isn’t practical. I’ll often simplify the paths by 98-100% to remove the “jaggies” from areas such as rivers, highways, and railroads that should be smooth curves, clean up the problem areas that show, and let the rest go.

Finally, remember to set your path opacity back to 100% and you can rest easy, knowing that you at least know what’s in there and have cleaned up the most egregious offenders.