Back-stories

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

January 1, 2023

Horizontal extruding

Rick Johnson

First, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the AxoTools survey. The meaningful comments are already making a difference in AxoTools’ features and documentation.

The most surprising thing was the number of users who wanted to extrude horizontally for a stylized drawing such as this one by Dörte Roßmann.

horizontal perspective

That seems like a natural thing for AxoTools to do, but we can’t forget that the plugin’s core function is to help illustrators work in views like isometric, dimetric, and trimetric where we see three surfaces, not two. It has never been a design tool, although there’s nothing wrong with bending the rules a bit to accomplish some design effects as long as it doesn’t hobble the plugin’s primary purpose.

Horizontal extruding has been available using the Extrude panel. Just set the angle to 0 and leave the option to project the art unchecked. That gives you something like this:

extrude panel 0 angle horizontal cylinder

If you projected the art with a 0° angle, you’d simply get a rectangle. The reason for this is that the Extrude panel, like the Extrude tool, work in the context of the current projection. If you drag a circle with the Extrude tool while holding the Cmd or Ctl key for a freeform angle, you’ll see that at a horizontal angle, all you see is a side view of your original shape.

horizontal extruding

To make things easier for people working with horizontal extruding, the Projection panel in the latest free update to AxoTools now supports broader Tilt and Turn values, which allows you to do a full-fledged horizontal extrusion.

Previously, values of 0 or 90 were not allowed for Tilt or Turn because they essentially hid one or even two of the three axonometric planes. Now, using a Tilt value of 0, or Turn value of 0 or 90, will disable the X and Z axis fields because there must be an incline on both axes in order to calculate the tilt and turn — in a case like this, the turn value is ambiguous. A Tilt value of 90 is essentially a top axo view, so Tilt is limited to 89°.

It’s important to understand, too, that at projections where the X and Z axes overlap, horizontal extruding is always on the X axis, so using the Extrude tool, the edges always drag out to the left. Can that be “fixed” to allow horizontal extruding to the right? Well, yes, if we add complications to an interface that some people say is already way too complicated. A workaround is that, with a Tilt value of 0, the Extrude panel extends your path to the left, while with other Tilt values, the panel extends it to the right.

In response to user requests, you can now press Shift when dragging with the Extrude tool to constrain to right angles. That won’t give you the above effect, though, because it’s constraining a freeform extrude. That is, it’s calculating what that shape looks like within your current projection, not a shadow effect.

If you truly want to go completely independent of the document’s current projection, you can always use the Transformations panel, which allows you to rotate and extrude your art in any orientation you like, be it upside-down or even backward.

More user-requested options are coming soon.

November 9, 2022

Multiple line weights in technical illustration

Rick Johnson

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.

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

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.

Here’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.

A 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.

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.”

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

One 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.

July 27, 2022

Easy isometric grids

Rick Johnson

An isometric grid is one of the most commonly asked-for features in AxoTools, as well as a frequent topic on the Adobe Illustrator user forum. It would be really nice if Adobe Illustrator’s Perspective Grid presets included Isometric, but that’s not an option right now. In the meantime, there are some easy alternatives.

If you’re lucky enough to have Hot Door’s CADtools, an axonometric grid tool is already built in.

For the rest of us, just do a simple internet search, you’ll probably come up with a gazillion links showing how to make your own. For example, there’s this short tutorial by envatotuts+ on “How to Create an Isometric Grid in Less Than 2 Minutes.” Essentially, you create a rectangular grid with Illustrator’s built-in Rectangular Grid tool, then project it to isometric using any of several methods.

But it gets even easier! Your internet search results will likely include many Adobe Illustrator documents with an isometric grid already built. Just download it and save it as a template to use any time you need it!

So, considering how isometric grids are so easily and readily available, it’s not likely to be added to AxoTools any time soon. Instead, you can expect new features that are really new.

February 28, 2022

Enter measurements your way in AxoTools

Rick Johnson

With the latest update to AxoTools, you can enter measurements in whatever units you’re comfortable with. Here’s an example:

Say your document ruler units is set to inches, but you need to extrude something to a distance you have in mm. Illustrator supports that within the app, but it’s not automatically there for plugins. Measurement fields in AxoTools now do that conversion for you. I really hadn’t planned at first on adding that — there’s a back story here.

First, all art in Adobe Illustrator is measured internally in points. Fortunately, Adobe’s interface for plugins includes a function that takes measurements from text typed by the user in the current ruler units and converts it to a numeric value calculated as points. Then another function converts numeric point values used within the plugin to text that plugins can give back to the user, calculated and formatted using their current ruler units. That’s great, but there are a lot of users in other parts of the world that use a comma as a decimal separator. Fortunately, Adobe added a variation of these functions that support international number formats. Unfortunately, the one that parses text with commas in decimals doesn’t see the commas, and the values get multiplied by ten, a hundred, or a thousand! Adobe’s bug became my bug.

To support my European customers, I wrote a function that parses the numbers typed, and honors commas as decimal separators, and wondered “Why not look at the units specified, as well?” All values need to be converted to points anyway for the plugin to work with, so it wasn’t a great leap code-wise.

As an extension of that, I wrote a function to convert values back to text with a caveat of my own. In AxoTools’ Draw Settings panel, users can specify standard stroke weights, but we don’t all use points for strokes — many use mm. Stroke measurements have little to do with our current ruler units, so the plugin lets you specify pt or mm, does the math when needed, then remembers your preference to always display it your way.

It can be frustrating dealing with bugs, but sometimes bugs can become butterflies!

November 9, 2020

Easier updates

Rick Johnson

Those of you who have had Graffix plugins for Adobe Illustrator for a while know that version updates and even new features are almost always free. In fact, every update since 2014 has been free, and although some significant updates are currently in progress, none are planned to require an additional payment.

When new features, improvements to existing features, or just addressing issues that occasionally arise, I like to get fixes and improvements in the hands of users as soon as practical.

On the other hand, I realize that unzipping the download, then navigating through the file system to place the plugin in Illustrator’s Plug-ins folder is a hassle. Illustrators have too much to do to be saddled with busywork like this!

When I rebuilt my plugins using Hot Door’s CORE libraries in 2014, I was encouraged that it had built-in almost all the tools I needed to automatically install updates (key word: almost). A fellow developer recently alerted me to an approach that finally made the last piece of this process possible. Some of the plugins available for download now have the auto-install system added, and the rest of the plugins will be updated as well in the near future.

When the new plugins fetch an update, they will automatically install it, and move the “read-me” doc file to a “Graffix plugins” folder located in your Documents folder. I only wish I could have enabled this sooner!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The auto-install, I found out too late, only works reliably on Mac systems, and then only when the Plug-ins folder has its permissions set to read/write for everybody. Current plugins test for the known limits and, if necessary, will send a link to your browser to download as it used to. If you’ve already downloaded a plugin with auto-install, you’ll have to manually download an update from the site. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Please remember, I’m just an illustrator like you who’s figured out how to write plugins, and that limited experience sometimes shows.

September 15, 2020

30+ years of isometric drawing in Adobe Illustrator

Rick Johnson

The process of doing isometric/axonometric drawings in Adobe Illustrator really hasn’t changed much since the mid 1990s, or even since the late 1980s, something I hadn’t fully realized until doing the first AxoTools video. How many of you can relate to this?

Working in Illustrator 88, I would project art to isometric by manually doing the scale-rotate-scale method. When the QuicKeys keyboard macro utility came out, it automated that process and also allowed me to change the constrain angle by pressing an otherwise-unused function key.

In 1994, when Illustrator 5 added support for plugins, I wrote one called Isometric that I shared free on my web site. It added menu items to project art to and from isometric planes, and to create box and cylinder primitives. Does anybody recall using this? I also wrote a free companion plugin Isometric Line Tool to draw straight lines in isometric, which was around quite a while and later merged into AxoTools.

In 1998, Illustrator 8 added recordable Actions, which was easier to maintain than updating the plugin as Illustrator’s API became more complicated. It also added Smart Guides, which I relied on when QuicKeys had compatibility issues with operating system changes.

About this time, Adobe had a simple 3D app called Dimensions (not the same as their current Dimensions product) that exported shapes to a file Illustrator could open. This app was the origin of the “Off Axis” projections I use in my Actions and in the current AxoTools presets. I used Dimensions in my first locomotive cutaway rendering. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. Some of you may use SketchUp in that same way today.

Has anybody found Illustrator CS’s 3D effect actually useful for scale isometric drawings? I had high hopes when it appeared, but it never proved truly useful to me.

Hot Door’s CADtools has had support for isometric for several versions now, and in recent years supports axonometric views. I’ve found CADtools indispensable for technical drawing, but knew there had to be an easier way to assemble the pieces.

So for over 30 years, the process has been to project a shape to an isometric plane, then manually move it into position. This worked OK when one plane served as a sort of floor plan that other shapes could be snapped to, but it didn’t work well for most things I drew, like vehicles, machinery, and electronics. In order to get objects positioned correctly, I often drew a temporary “armature” with projected lines along two or three axes.

I’d actually envisioned today’s AxoTools plugin decades ago, using virtual armatures to position art and tools with custom constraints to move art along any defined axis. Using geometric formulas by Ron Kempke, it became possible to add support for any axonometric projection showing the left, right, and top views. Why it took so long, I’m sorry I can’t answer. I hope you agree that doing axonometric drawing in Adobe Illustrator is significantly easier than ever with AxoTools.

August 13, 2020

AxoTools video (Spanish)

Rick Johnson

I was recently contacted by Iván Gómez about doing videos on my plugins. Iván is a certified Adobe instructor in Columbia who has done many other videos on various aspects of Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, which are available on YouTube. He chose to do a video on AxoTools, which is very informative. I have an AxoTools video in progress also, but it won’t be available until after the next AxoTools update featuring a few new tools.

If you’re interested in AxoTools, please watch this as it demonstrates some important concepts:

Overview of isometric, dimetric, and trimetric projections
Setting and changing the orientation of your projection
Placing and moving common reference points
Projecting using buttons in the panel, using menus, or custom keyboard shortcuts
Moving objects in the axonometric view by dragging in an orthographic view
Using the AxoDraw tool to draw constrained lines
Using the AxoScale and AxoRotate tools to modify projected art

Viewers can also benefit from a coupon code shown in the video, good for 20% off any Graffix plugins during August 2020.

Thanks, Iván, for doing the video I must confess I should have done months ago!