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Rick Johnson

About Rick Johnson

https://rj-graffix.com

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

Posts by Adobe Wan Kenobe:

AxoTools user survey

AxoTools Projection panel

If you’ve used AxoTools, either as a trial or as part of your everyday work, please take the AxoTools user survey to help us improve the plugin and its user experience.

AxoTools user survey

This will help to identify:

  • Which features are most important, or least important
  • Which features to revise, and which to leave alone
  • Direction for development of new tutorial videos and documentation

How can we make AxoTools work better for you? Your observations and concerns are important to us.

Multiple line weights in technical illustration

You may have seen a recent video summarizing methods to use multiple line weights in your illustrations.

It’s probably helpful to go into a bit more detail and show more examples.

single line weightUsing a single line weight (or “stroke width” as it applies to Illustrator’s path art property) is a simple and efficient way to work. 

upper-left shaded line weight

By using more than one line weight, however, your illustrations can have more interest and suggest form.

One method assumes a light source in the upper left. Here edges facing away from the light are given a heavier weight. This was the standard where I worked at Kalmbach Publishing Co. in the 1970s. My mentors there told me it was adopted from a standard for US Patent Office drawings. It was easy to apply using pen and ink, but when they switched from Rapidograph pen to Adobe Illustrator in the 1990s, they switched to a single line weight. Adobe Illustrator, unfortunately, doesn’t lend itself well to multiple line weights, especially if the path is filled.

GP30 hood line exampleHere’s an example of an illustration I did using the “Kalmbach” method, drawn in ink at 1.5 times reproduction size. Detail lines were drawn with a 4×0 Rapidograph pen, and the heavy lines were probably a no. 0 or 1 pen. In those days, we typically cut an Amberlith overlay to add a flat tint to the background, which helped separate the subject from the background.

dual line weightA more common method called “line contrast shading” used in exploded-view parts drawings uses heavier lines on all outside edges of objects. In this example, the bottom of the cube and cylinder are thin lines because they represent the joint between two surfaces. A heavy line would suggest the objects float above the other art. In the case of the round hole, a varied line width makes a smooth transition between the front- and rear-facing edges. Complex illustrations can use three or four line weights. Standards are more like guidelines, actually, that vary between people and between businesses, often based largely on the personal preference of someone with experience and/or influence.

filter drawingfilter drawing

Greg Maxson drew these filter illustrations with pen-and-ink on Mylar for Hyster Co. back in the late 80’s. He explained, “You could really get lost in the detail with pen-and-ink. Lines within an object are thin, exterior object lines are heavier, and exterior object lines that are down and away from the light source are heavier and darker still. The heavying up of the lines down and away from the light source was typically used when illustrating larger equipment, machinery, etc. to give those objects more visual weight. Appropriate for rendering a bulldozer, but less appropriate for rendering the exploded illustration of an ink pen, for example. Of course, super thin interior object lines were/are common when used to represent less than 90 degree radii, and thin broken lines to represent a highlight along an edge, knurling, screening, etc.”

suspension drawingGreg used a three weight treatment  on this Raptor suspension illustrations for Car and Driver magazine.

Maxson spark plugOne more piece by Greg Maxson shows his skill at technical illustration using a variety of software, often including SketchUp, Illustrator, and others. Here he adds clarity to the subject with varied line weights, line colors, sometimes sketchy line treatments, and meaningful shading and textures in filled areas.

When AxoTools adds add multiple line weights, it places stroked paths above non-stroked filled paths so weights can change as needed anywhere along the object without affecting the fill. With a simple click of the Axo Line tool, you can toggle weights between thick and thin as necessary. In the coming months, users can expect to see more refinements in AxoTools handling of stroke properties. Please contact me if you have ideas that can make your work faster or easier.

Project a house to isometric

It really is possible to project these orthographic drawings of a house to isometric in less than a minute! I actually did it in 35 seconds!

This video gives an overview of the process using AxoTools in Adobe Illustrator. You can find the step-by-step instructions and link to the project file (saved for Adobe Illustrator CC 2019) here:

Project to isometric

Project and extrude in isometric

The technique highlights AxoTools’ project-in-place functionality using reference points for quick, accurate placement, ad well as extruding in an axonometric view, measured from a corresponding distance dragged in a flat ortho view.

This visual approach eliminates tedious measuring or counting of isometric grid units. Try it! If you don’t have AxoTools, you can download it here.

Project to isometric

AxoTools gradient shading

Gradient shading

The latest update to AxoTools includes three improvements to shaded fills on extruded art. First, curved paths now have a gradient fill to more accurately show the curvature of the surface.

shaded objects

Second, the lighting is based on the location of a theoretical light source, so surfaces are shaded based on their actual orientation relative to the light, and no longer assigned a simple “top,” “left,” or “right” tint or shade.

Third, the light source is user-definable.

When you extrude a path, its fill color is used as the base color for shading values. For each base color AxoTools uses, it creates a gradient that’s stored in the document’s Swatches panel. To use your own gradient for shade values, just fill your starting object with the gradient and extrude it.

There is also a new panel where you can make adjustments to your light and shading, but it’s important to stress that you don’t ever have to fuss with those controls in order to use the new lighting and shading features. Most of you will probably want to stop reading here and just go download the update!

More for “explorers”

For those other few people in the room who want to take things a notch or two higher, the new panel works in three areas:

  • Gradient colors
  • Light location
  • Lighting properties.

At the top of the panel is a series of five color well widgets that represent the five stops on the shading gradient ramp for your current document color. The gradient itself represents the range of all possible colors to apply to your fills. AxoTools generates a shaded gradient ramp for each fill color you start with when you extrude with the shading option enabled.

gradient ramp

The gradient represents the range of possible tints and shades available based on the angle of the lighting. The first gradient stop represents the lightest highlight color where the light hits it at a 90° angle. Using the default settings, the angle of light on the left isometric plane falls very close to the second stop, which is set to the original color. The third stop represents the shade when the light hits an object on its edge, and stops 4 and 5 represent the rear surfaces, with the last stop showing the effect of backlighting.

The light source’s location is defined with the familiar Tilt and Turn adjustments, which are relative to the viewer. Following these are slider controls for the light intensity, ambient light, and amount of backlighting. As you make adjustments to the lighting properties, the color wells along the top of the panel will preview the results of changes to the intensity, ambient, and backlight lighting properties.

At the bottom right, the “Reset to defaults” button will restore the default settings for all slider controls.

Below the color wells are two buttons relating directly to them. The “Rebuild gradient” button will generate five shades of the current document color.

The “Save gradient” button, I’ll confess, was included for the true “explorers.” If you changed the colors in the color well controls, either by changing lighting properties or using the color pickers in the color wells, this will overwrite the gradient ramp used for the base color.

Please see the online documentation for more information.

I hope you find this new feature useful!

AxoTools Quick Tips videos

Today I released the first in a series of short videos covering topics relating to AxoTools, both using the plugin and doing technical illustration in general. The first video briefly describes different types of projections for the benefit of those who don’t come from a technical illustration background.

The next in the series will cover how to begin an isometric drawing in AxoTools. Other possible topics may include:

  • Using multiple line weights (including dashed break lines for curved surfaces) to suggest form and mass
  • Filling art with white to overlap parts
  • Using flow lines
  • Fill modes and other Draw panel options
  • What is that option to rotate ellipses when projecting?
  • Using the line tool to draw straight lines and to toggle line weights
  • Entering simple equations in text fields, plus auto-entry of measurements
  • Use the Extrude tool to draw a drop shadow (but never for an oblique projection!)
  • What’s the difference between the Transformations panel and Auxiliary projection panel?
  • Using the Measure tool
  • How does Project-in-Place work?
  • What are the Axo Zone tool and Projection Zones for?

If you have other suggestions for short video subjects, please leave a comment below!

AxoTools Qukck Tip: Projections

 

I’d like to thank Ron Kempke, AxoTools’ co-author, as well as Matt Jennings of Industrial Artworks, and Greg Maxson of Greg Maxson Illustration for the use of their illustrations and advice in getting this video series started.

Tag72a plugin from Worker723a now available

Tag72a automates the process of reporting information about your files by automatically creating and updating text objects that remain part of the file itself. Each of these properties have options allowing you to customize it to best serve the needs of your workflow.
Each time a document is saved or printed, the selected items will be automatically created or updated.
Reported properties of the document include:
  • User name
  • Document name
  • Document file path
  • Date saved
  • Date printed
  • Spot colors used
  • Fonts used

You can download and try Tag72a for free from the Worker72a product page. For detailed information, please see the Tag72a online documentation.

This is the same Tag72a plugin you’ve known from Worker72a, updated for Windows and Apple M1. Evaluate with 500 free trial uses.

Worker72a Locked or Hidden detector now available

Locked or HiddenThe Locked or Hidden Detector (LorH) is now available in the Worker72a collection. This plugin for Adobe Illustrator scans your documents for art objects that are locked or hidden. You can run it with a menu selection or set it to automatically scan every document you open.

This update now runs under Windows and on Apple’s new M1-series processors. You can download it and evaluate it with 500 free trial uses.

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