Rick Johnson

About Rick Johnson

https://rj-graffix.com/about/

Posts by Adobe Wan Kenobe:

November 29, 2024

Totallypic plugins available in English (free download)

The plugins

Graffix is pleased to be chosen as the only authorized distributor for English versions of two free plugins from Totallypic. Requires Adobe Illustrator 2025 for Mac or Windows.

Fit Selection

Similar to the built-in Fit Artboard in Window command, you can use it via the menu View > Fit Selection to quickly fit the selected objects to the window size. Pairing it with a keyboard shortcut can significantly enhance your workflow efficiency.

Perceptual Gradient

This uses the OKLab algorithm to convert standard linear gradients into perceptual interpolation. The results are similar to the gradient effects offered by Adobe Photoshop. You can find it under Effects > Totallypic > Perceptual Gradient, or apply it via the f(x) option in the Appearance panel.

The back story

Jeen Hung and I have for years exchanged ideas about Adobe Illustrator and how plugins add to its capabilities. Several of the features added to my plugins were suggested by Jeen. He’s done some amazing illustrations and later studied writing his own AI plugins. Jeen provided the code for Select Menu that finds more recently-added art objects such as intertwined objects and mirrored repeats. He has continued to develop plugins for use at his business, Totallypic, and has made them available at his website. Recently, he has generously created English versions for me to distribute here.

Totallypic logo

About Totallypic

Totallypic is a design team from Taiwan specializing in vector illustration and design. Over the past decade, we have focused on creating and licensing royalty-free graphics, achieving over 10 million downloads globally. Recently, we have also expanded into Illustrator online tutorials and plugin development, although these services are currently only available in Taiwan.

Download Totallypic plugins

February 20, 2024

New PopArt live symbols for AxoTools

Rick Johnson

PopArt symbols can be dragged from a symbols panel and AxoTools will automatically expand them to fit your choice of axonometric planes in your current document projection. This includes extruded art, art with compound rotations, and with moves along axes.

For example, say you’re building an axonometric village and you want awnings over some of your windows. Rather than build them, or copy and paste them from a previous project, you can store one as a PopArt symbol and drag them into your document as needed.

PopArt demo

You’re not limited to just isometric, either. PopArt will expand and conform to any face in any document projection you set, including an auxiliary projection.

PopArt turn values

table, chairs, umbrella

PopArt can contain several layered objects at various angles. In this illustration, only two PopArt chairs created the four seen here, and the table with umbrella is all one symbol.

Please see the AxoTools documentation for more information on creating and using AxoTools PopArt symbols. And please let me know if you create PopArt symbols you’re willing to share with others!

February 10, 2024

AxoTools Transformations panel improvements

Rick Johnson

Several new features in AxoTools make the Transformations panel more flexible and easier to use.

live preview

Live preview of extruded art shows your shading and stroke widths.

change orientation

Select several Transformations objects at once and change all of their orientation settings. This works best if they all share a common anchor point so that they all “move” together.

You can now expand several Transformations objects at once, rather than one-by-one.

Transformations objects can now embed properties from the Draw Settings panel. In this example, the tan box is divided into four layers, and the blue cylinder is set as seated against another surface.

To embed custom settings, check the option “Art has custom draw settings.” The info boxes in the Draw Settings and Transformations panels will display a blue circle to indicate that the settings chosen apply only to the selected object. These fields will otherwise display a document or globe icon to indicate whether the current Draw Settings are global defaults or are saved locally in the document.

Please note that the fill method is still applied globally, though, to ensure that the color and shading are consistent across all art in the document.

These features are new in AxoTools plugin for Adobe Illustrator version 25.0.2, now available for download.

January 15, 2024

AxoTools adds control bar

Rick Johnson

Illustrator users know that we need panels to access controls and options, but it quickly fills valuable working screen space. Collapsing panels to icons helps, but repeatedly opening and closing them can be a hassle, as well. One option Adobe brilliantly engineered for Illustrator is the control bar that shows a limited number of essential controls consolidated into in a thin strip.

The newest version of AxoTools now includes a control bar as well. You can access it in the menu Window > AxoTools > AxoTools Control.

The first item shows at a glance the projection of the current document. Double-click it to open the Projection panel to change it. Next is a label showing the current document’s scale ratio and units used in AxoTools’ panels that calculate scale measurements. Again, double-click the label to open the Preferences dialog to change the scale or units.

Next is a series of four buttons to project or unproject art, which work exactly like the buttons in the Projection panel.

The next set of four buttons control options that affect projecting and other functions. The first one selects whether reference points are used. This one has a blue background when active to make it easier to spot since you would normally want to keep this option off unless you are busy projecting art from various ortho views to an axonometric view as described here.

The next option controls whether to automatically project a copy of the selected art. The third button chooses whether to rotate ellipses so that the anchor points align on the major and minor axis when projected. Fourth is the option to apply properties in the Draw Settings panel when projecting art.

At the far right is a shortcut to open AxoTools’ online documentation.

Are there other items you would like to see included here? They could static like these controls, or dynamic — visible only under some conditions. Let me know what you need!

November 14, 2023

Fastener libraries for AxoTools

Rick Johnson

One of the new features in AxoTools is adding fastener libraries in the form of specially-formatted symbol libraries. AxoTools comes with a fastener library, and you can add others. Industrial Artworks has already created a library of nearly a hundred high-quality fastener symbols, which is available for purchase.

To install AxoTools’ symbol library, open the AxoTools Fasteners panel. In its flyout menu, select the item to Update “AxoTools Fasteners.ai” file.

A dialog will ask you to confirm whether you really want to install it. Click the OK button, or press Escape to cancel..

You will probably get a message that the file and folder cannot be created in the Symbols folder. Click the Yes button to create it on your desktop.

You should now see a folder named “AxoTools Symbols” on your desktop. Navigate to your Symbols folder, located in your Adobe Illustrator application folder in Presets > [Language] > Symbols, and copy the “AxoTools Symbols” folder here. Your operating system will ask you for permission to copy the file. If you look in this folder, you’ll see one Illustrator file named “AxoTools Symbols.ai” which you can open to see the available symbols and read instructions on how to create your own fastener symbols. If you purchase an additional symbol library or create your own, this is where the file should be placed.

Restart Illustrator. On launch, AxoTools will look for this folder to load fastener symbols into their corresponding menus in the Fasteners panel. If you also install the Industrial Artworks symbol library, your Screw variations menu should look like this:

The divider separates generated symbols drawn for any projection from the symbol-based fasteners, which are typically drawn in isometric. The two slotted hex screws and two drywall screws come with AxoTools. The items identified with “IA” are from Industrial Artworks.

Please let me know how your experience goes with installing, using, and perhaps creating fastener symbol libraries.

November 12, 2023

AxoTools adds Fastener panel and tool

Rick Johnson

AxoTools has added a new Fasteners panel to help you quickly create fasteners of common types and sizes, scaled to fit your document.

Check the fasteners you want to create and choose a variation in the menus, then select a size from the list of presets. If you’re creating a bolt or screw, enter a shank length. The hole can be created either with or without matching threads.

Choose one of the four available axonometric faces and click the “Create fastener(s)” button.

These options also define the fasteners created with the Axo Fastener tool.

Click or drag the Fastener tool to create a set of fasteners rotated to any of your document’s axes, and sized to your document’s scale.

Built-in fastener selections include 17 types of nuts, bolts, and washers drawn as path art in your document’s projection — that’s any projection, as it is not limited to only isometric.

In addition, 14 other fasteners are included in a symbol library that you can use as-is, modify, or add your own custom fasteners. Threaded shanks are automatically added to screw/bolt heads and threaded holes are added to nuts. If you’re using multiple stroke widths, the stroke widths of the fastener symbols are changed to your standard widths and the symbols expanded to fully-editable art.

Extensive, professionally-drawn symbol libraries will also be available soon from other sources.

These new features are available now in a free update to AxoTools.

For more information, please refer to the online documentation for the Fasteners panel. Download AxoTools and try it yourself.

October 13, 2023

All plugins now Adobe Illustrator 2024 compatible

Rick Johnson

All plugins have been updated to be Adobe Illustrator 2024 compatible, and benefit from various improvements as well. Free updates are available now.

Some of the functions in the libraries could not be updated for AI 2024, however, and still support AI CC 2019 and 2020. Those older versions will remain available, but all updates are now available for AI 2021 through 2024 only.

August 21, 2023

ToolShed Transform tool updates

Rick Johnson

If you often need to align art objects with paths, that just got a lot easier with an update to ToolShed’s Transform tool. With your art selected and Transform tool active, just shift-click the path you want to align to, and the art snaps into alignment!

Like Adobe Illustrator’s Free Transform tool, you can drag to move, rotate, or scale the art, but ToolShed’s version does a few things Adobe’s tool doesn’t:

Click to recalculate the bounding box based on the art’s contents
Alt/Option-click to choose your own anchor point for scaling and rotating
Double-click to reset the bounding box and reset the anchor point to the selection center
Alt/Option-drag to rotate the bounding box
Shift-click to rotate the art to align with a chosen point on a path
Shift-Alt/Option-click to align the bounding box with a point on a path.

In addition, ToolShed adds three menu items to work with bounding boxes:

Object > Transform > Get Bounding Box Rotation… will display the bounding box of a selected art object.
Object > Transform > Set Bounding Box Rotation… will display a dialog where you can specify the angle of the bounding box.
Object > Transform > Restore Original Rotations… will rotate each selected art object to its original orientation.

Bounding box madness

If you work with Adobe’s Free Transform tool a lot or have AI set to display bounding boxes, you have probably noticed some weird behavior regarding rotations. Simple paths work fine, but art types like groups and compound paths have a parent object that contains the child art objects. When you rotate these heirarchical art types, the accumulated rotation metadata is added to the individual child art, but may not be applied to the container itself. In addition, Adobe’s bounding box may not read rotation information that is in fact there in some art types.

Using ToolShed’s Transform tool, you can easily fix misbehaving bounding boxes in order to manipulate art within ToolShed, but please be aware that Adobe Illustrator is inconsistent in how or even if it determines bounding box rotations. If this drives you crazy, be assured that it’s not you. Adobe Illustrator is crazy. ToolShed can help make your work life a little more sane.