I have received a handful of reports that 2022 plugins either crash Illustrator or Illustrator refuses to load them citing a conflict with its internal plugins. So far, affected systems are:
2013 or 2014 27″ iMac or
2012 MacBook Pro
macOS 10.15 Catalina
Adobe Illustrator 2022
The problem may be resolved by updating macOS to Big Sur (11.0) or higher, if your Mac supports it (late 2013 models and newer).
If the plugins continue to crash under macOS 11 or higher, please use the contact form using the button below and include:
Your computer model
OS version
Description of problem (crash or no-load dialog)
Crash report if available
Another option, of course, is to continue using Adobe Illustrator 25 (2021) with the corresponding version of the plugins.
The CORE developer libraries used for the 2022 version of all Graffix plugins for Adobe Illustrator no longer support Illustrator versions older than CC 2019, so new and updated plugins will require CC 2019 and above. Plugins for CS6 through CC 2018 will remain available so new users with older systems can still use the latest legacy releases, then update whenever they’re ready.
CS6 – CC 2018 (Legacy) = plugin version 16
CC 2019 – AI 2021 = plugin version 16, will be replaced with version 23 as updates are made
AI 2022 = plugin version 23
All v.23 plugins honor v.16 licenses, so simply install as always, no special steps are required.
Updates to plugins for Adobe Illustrator 2022 (v. 26) are complete. Updated plugins now include:
AxoTools
Cleanup Tool
Concatenate
Cutting Tools
Nudge Panel
Select Menu
Square Up
TextSync
ToolShed
Apple M1 processors are also supported in the AI 2022 build.
Important note:
Graffix plugins compiled with CORE libraries which supported Adobe Illustrator versions back to CS6 have plugin versions 16.x (the minimum version of AI required). The latest CORE libraries for AI 2022 support only Illustrator CC 2019 (AI 23) and later, so new plugin releases will have plugin version 23.
If you purchased a license for a version 16 plugin, the 2022 compatibility update is free (as has been since CS6-to-CC) and the v. 16 activation code will continue to work in your v. 23 plugin.
If you’re running Graffix plugins under Illustrator 2021 or earlier, those plugins may occasionally get maintenance updates and will alert you when a v. 16 update becomes available. New features will be limited to the v 23 plugins on CC 2019 and later. For now, users will need to manually download and install the v. 23 version of the plugin, since the v 16 plugins only look for v. 16.x updates.
That said, only the 2022 versions are new v. 23 builds. AI23 – AI25 plugins will be replaced in the downloads section later, and those on the Support mailing list will be notified when they’re all ready.
If you do much freehand drawing with the pencil tool, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the Illustrator 25.3 update with the new canvas rotation feature. In preliminary testing, most Graffix plugins seem to work fine, with one notable exception.
In AxoTools under macOS Mojave, some panel controls such as dials, the Projection panel’s proxy cube, and the list in the Transformations panel appear blank. I’ll address these as soon as possible, but it will likely have to wait an update to the CORE libraries these plugins are based on. If this affects you, you may want to either update your OS or hold off on updating to AI 25.3, or also keep a second older version of Illustrator on your hard drive for when you need to use those AxoTools controls.
Compatibility with Apple’s new M1 processors is also expected in a new CORE update, but no availability date is available.
AxoTools is not a 3D application, but tries to assist illustrators in achieving a 3D look the best it can. Simple shapes are pretty straightforward, but complicated shapes can wind over and under each other like an Escher drawing. In that case, AxoTools evaluates the paths and makes its best guess on correctly stacking the pieces.
When a path is extruded, AxoTools creates closed paths for fillable areas and open paths of multiple stroke weights. To make things more easily edited, the pieces are organized into groups. In the Layers panel, you can expand these groups to find the pieces you may want to edit. Compound paths contain elements nested inside of other elements, so things get a bit more complex.
The front surface is named as a “cap,” and is placed above all of the edge pieces. The edges, which give it depth, are divided into surfaces. Each surface is composed of fillable “panels,” stroked “paths” that follow the original path’s shape, and “connector” pieces for corners that connect the front cap to the rear cap (the rear cap and hidden surfaces may or may not be drawn depending on your Extrude panel settings).
This is not an animation, but a screen recording right out of Adobe Illustrator! Each face of this dodecahedron is a live Transformation object created from the same pentagon shape, with movements and rotations added in the AxoTools Transformations panel.
Sure, it’s unlikely you’ll ever need a shape like this, but we often need art rotated away from our usual three planes. This demonstrates how, whether it’s a skylight, an instrument panel, or graphics on a milk carton, that task is now a whole lot easier!
You can download this file from the link at the end of this post and with AxoTools installed, even in demo mode, examine how this crazy “disco ball” was built.
Each facet is made from a pentagonal path, turned into a live object that specifies its movements and rotations. The orientation is set relative to the current AxoTools projection, so in the AxoTools Projection panel you can adjust the settings with the dial controls to see the dodecahedron rotate as a unit in real time!
When Ron Kempke built this, he used his math superpowers to determine the angles and offsets.
But fear not! For those who would rather not break out a scientific calculator, it’s possible to let Illustrator do most of the heavy lifting. First, make a copy of your base pentagon to create some guide art. Imagine the dodecahedron as two “tulip” shapes placed face-to-face. We know that the shape across the “shoulders” of the tulip would be equal to five segments equal to the width across the base pentagon. That will allow us to draw a top view of the shape.
The offset from the base pentagon to the section at the shoulders tell us the foreshortening of the slope of each “pedal.” Draw vertical guides this distance apart. Draw a vertical line from the base of the pentagon to the height of its shoulders. Rotate this line until its width matches the offset distance in the top view. Measure the angle of this line (26.56° in this case) for use in the Transformation objects later. Draw a horizontal guide at the top of this rotated line.
Copy the pentagon and rotate the copy 180°, then position it so each pentagon’s tip and shoulders match as shown below. Select the pentagons and scale them vertically, using the foreshortened height of the rotated line as a guide.
This art, of course, isn’t a real side view, since the upper and lower pieces would be horizontally scaled and sheared differently. We’re only interested in finding the foreshortened vertical dimensions in order to create our Transformation objects.
With these principles in mind, click the link below to download Ron’s file and examine the settings in each piece.
The new Transformations panel allows you to add a series of rotations and movements to art. The resulting art is then projected to any of eight orientations shown at the bottom of the panel. Items in the list can be edited and rearranged as needed. Enter a value or drag the dial control to watch your art rotate or move in real time.
When you’re done, you can leave the object as-is in your illustration, click the Expand button to convert it to editable art to color and stylize it, or click the Release button to revert to the original art.
Your live Transformation object can be projected to your axonometric view, where items will appear correctly projected, with offset distances mathematically scaled to place them correctly into your illustration.
Artwork oriented to an axonometric view updates as you adjust your current projection. If, for example, you’re adding a skylight or control panel that’s angled 15°, you need only enter the 15° rotation and AxoTools orients it into whichever plane you need.
This is not a true 3D application, but uses time-tested mathematical formulas to orient your art to match whatever view you need, all within Adobe Illustrator. Illustrations with components that tilt, turn, swivel, and spin are now easier than ever. No more guesstimating to scale and place artwork! There’s much more information at the new online documentation page.
Sometimes we run into jobs that require variations of artwork where we start with a sample, and once approved, the customer provides the remainder of the information. This often means duplicating what we have and embarking on a tedious process of changing the parts that are different. If the text needs more than one style, re-applying fonts, weights, colors, etc., can become time consuming. Here’s a way to streamline that process using the TextSync plugin.
Say we’re doing a series of information on various states. Let’s start with Minnesota, using a state outline and an area text object. Since the text frame may shrink or grow from one state to another, it’s probably a good idea to go to the Type menu and set the Area Type Options to enable Auto Size.
In this first example, we set the state name to a larger size, bold, and add a color. Assign a character style (I called it “State”). Assign the remaining text another style (in this case “info”). Select the capital city of St. Paul and change its formatting, then assign a style. Next, the term “Vikings” will change for other states, so select it and assign a new style, even though the actual formatting doesn’t change from the text surrounding it. Last, assign a character style to the text of the beer name.
In the Layers panel, duplicate the layer and give each a descriptive name. With nothing selected, export all of the text of the document with the menu command File > TextSync > Export Text Objects… You’ll see a dialog prompting you to create a text file to save the data in. At this point your document contains a hidden index correlating the text objects to each line item of the file. Because of the way the text is broken into blocks according to its formatting, it’s probably easiest to edit it in a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel. Here’s what our sample’s file looks like:
The first column contains the ID of each text object. Do not change or delete these! The “<p>” at the beginning of column C represents a paragraph break. Similarly, a tab character would be indicated with a “<t>” notation. You can see here that it’s helpful to not include the return character in the formatted state text, so that it stays in the column we won’t edit.
Let’s select cell B1 and change the state name to Illinois. Now tab to column F and change Vikings to Bears, then change the beer name in column H, then make changes for Wisconsin in row 2.
Now we’ll import this back into our Illustrator document. We can save this file out as tab-delimited text and in Illustrator, select it with the menu item File > TextSync > Import Text Objects… A faster way, though, if you’re editing the text file on the same computer as your Illustrator file, is this:
Select the data
Copy the data to the clipboard
In Illustrator, press the Alt or Option key as you select the menu item to import.
Your text will update with formatting preserved, because the tabs in the exported file represent the areas where formatting changes. That’s why we gave the football team its own character style, even though the characters didn’t really change. If we replace the state outlines to match, we’ll get something like this:
To change the text formatting, you need only double-click the character style in the Character Styles panel and change the specifications there, and the text with that style will update everywhere in the document.
You’ll probably find this most useful for when you have many labels with similar formatting, or using layers with different specifications for different products.
If you have one or more text objects selected when you export, only the selected objects will be exported. With nothing selected, everything is exported. If text files are imported with no IDs or IDs that don’t correlate with existing text objects, new text objects will be created, one for each line of text. This can be useful for importing files with lists of callouts to be added.
Please keep in mind that each “chunk” of text represents what’s known internally in Illustrator as a text run. Each text run ends and a new one begins where the formatting changes. TextSync doesn’t support specific format changes, but was created to allow the contents of many formatted callouts to be exported and edited outside of Illustrator, then updated in their original locations with minimal effort.
I hope this saves you as much time as it’s saved me. Remember, it comes with 100 trial uses to import and export to test if it’s useful for you.
AxoTools is not a 3D application, but tries to assist illustrators in achieving a 3D look the best it can. Simple shapes are pretty straightforward, but complicated shapes can wind over and under each other like an 
The new Transformations panel allows you to add a series of rotations and movements to art. The resulting art is then projected to any of eight orientations shown at the bottom of the panel. Items in the list can be edited and rearranged as needed. Enter a value or drag the dial control to watch your art rotate or move in real time.
In this first example, we set the state name to a larger size, bold, and add a color. Assign a character style (I called it “State”). Assign the remaining text another style (in this case “info”). Select the capital city of St. Paul and change its formatting, then assign a style. Next, the term “Vikings” will change for other states, so select it and assign a new style, even though the actual formatting doesn’t change from the text surrounding it. Last, assign a character style to the text of the beer name.
