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Nudge Panel now includes a pattern mover tool

nudge toolWhen fine-tuning the position of a pattern, I’ve often wondered if it would be faster and easier to just zoom in, click on a point I want aligned with something else, and drag it to the new position. Nudge Panel now includes a tool to let you do just that. And d’ya know what? It really is faster and easier than clicking the nudge buttons on the panel (although you may want to make the final ever-so-small adjustments with the panel). Snapping the tool to a path or point for alignment makes precise adjustments even more quickly.

For the technically curious, the tool works by choosing a reference point in the pattern, then dragging as shown above to a destination point. It would be great to just see the pattern move with the cursor, but as with all Adobe Illustrator tools, changes while dragging are only updated in wireframe mode until the mouse or stylus is released. Only then is the affected art actually redrawn.

Download the free update for Nudge Panel 16 and try it out!

Fence Cut added to Cutting Tools 16.1

How many ways are there to cut paths? Adobe provides quite a few, but there are a lot of situations where these tools don’t work well. The Scissors tool suffices for cutting or dividing one path, providing it’s not under another art object. Most of the other methods are essentially variations on the PathFinder Divide function, useful only for dividing filled shapes to make new shapes. To simply cut through paths, whether filled or unfilled, open or closed, there’s Cutting Tools.

The latest release, 16.1, adds a new Fence Cut feature. Here’s how it works:

  • Draw a path where you want to trim. It can be straight or curved, open or closed, above or below the paths to cut. I suspect most people would just draw a rectangle to define a “neat line.”
  • To protect any paths crossing your Cut line, lock or hide them.
  • Select the Cut line path object.
  • Select Object > Path > Fence Cut.


All editable paths that cross the Fence or Cut line will be cut at their intersection. Depending on your tool’s current preferences, the cut line will either be preserved, deleted, or cut along with the editable art. In the example above the larger ellipse is selected as the Cut path, and the tool is set to cut the fence path.


Go ahead and take it for a test run!

Updates for everything!

All Graffix plugins have something in common, whether it’s a module of code to add an About Box, handle preferences, or other functions. All of these shared libraries have had improvements made to them, making the plugins more stable, more reliable, and with better memory management. Every plugin available for CS6, CC, CC 2014, CC 2015, CC 2015.3, and CC 2017 (all 132 variations) now has an update available They’re recommended for all users.

And once you’ve downloaded those updates, you may notice that the read-me doc has been updated, as well, with clearer instructions on where to place the plugin. There’s also a link to the support area of this web site, which has been updated with an FAQ section and will see more frequent and meaningful help topics.

Many thanks to all users who have shared their questions, comments, and observations, which led to these improvements.

All the best,

Concatenate’s emergency brake

Concatenate progress barWe’ve come to pretty much take for granted how quickly plugins work, regardless of the complexity of the calculations and manipulations they may do. Concatenate is designed to handle everyday small jobs, but also take on tasks that simply aren’t practical otherwise. Sometimes imported files can contain many layers and a gazillion paths. Seriously, I’ve worked with files containing over 200 layers and over 2,000,000 objects. Yes, two million paths! I kid you not.

Pre-CS6 versions of Concatenate had a progress bar and could be cancelled if things were moving too slowly, or if you’re just impatient like me. When the developers’ landscape changed with CS6 and CC, there were a few things that took a while to work around, and the progress/cancel feature is now back. The progress bar is nice, but the option to cancel an operation that’s taking longer than expected can be a lifesaver, like an emergency brake, escape pod, ejection seat, or special super-powers when life gets complicated.


Helpful tip no. 1: If you have a very complex file, it’ probably helpful to select one area at a time to concatenate.

Helpful tip no. 2: You can simplify the assimilate process by hiding or locking layers that aren’t relevant.

Concatenate 16.1.1 is recommended for all users, especially those who may forget to save before trying ludicrously reckless things. You can trust me on this…

Square Up: Free Transform’s new best friend

Square Up usage 2Newer versions of Illustrator CC have tools that allow you to draw casual rectangles and it automatically converts them to nice, square objects. But what if you’re working with customer-supplied art or something that had been distorted by previous transformations? You probably won’t start with something as sorry as the image shown here, but it’s not a problem if you did.

Square Up usage 1Using the Square Up plugin for Adobe Illustrator, simply select “Vertical and horizontal” from the popup menu and click the Go button.


Square Up usage 3Almost instantly, your path(s) will become nice and square!


Square Up usage 4What if your art is rotated, and you want it to stay that way? No problem…


Square Up usage 5Just select “Object’s dominant axis from the popup menu and the plugin will calculate the general angle of your art.

Square Up usage 6

If several objects are selected, all of them will be squared to the same angle.

Square Up usage 7When placing many rectangular shapes where several may need to be at the same arbitrary angle or each a bit different, the Free Transform tool is really helpful.

Square Up usage 8After dragging duplicates of the same rectangle around, you may notice it’s a bit skewed. I found with the newer versions of Illustrator that constrained transformations are no longer a given, and accidentally distorting a rectangle is unfortunately easy.

Square Up usage 9It’s no problem with Square Up, though. With the click of a button, the art is re-squared and the bounding box’s rotation is set to match the rotation of the art. If you do technical or production art, this could be a real timesaver. Go ahead and give it a test run. The trial period is based on usage, not time, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to put it through its paces and try out the other modes, such as aligning to the AI Preferences constrain angle or just collapsing the control handles to remove all curves from the path.

You can find it here, and download the one for your platform and AI version. Can this be made easier to use, or more flexible? Feel free to say so. Your comments and suggestions are always welcomed. I’m an illustrator, too, so as Red Green says, “we’re all in this together.”

 

Concatenate updated to v. 16.1

Concatenate panelThis is the best version of Concatenate ever (IMHO), and I find it’s a real pleasure to use. This update is highly recommended for all users. “What’s new?” you might ask. First, the two checkbox options are gone. Averaging anchor points is now built in. Why would anyone want short connectors between them? If you do, by all means let me know and if there’s enough demand, I’ll be happy to bring that back. Next, the option to average the control points is gone. I’ve never used it, since the results have never really given results I was happy with. Instead, I added an option to smooth joins between two curved paths by aligning the control handles. Of course, we don’t always want all curves smoothed, so there’s a setting to specify a range within which smoothing will be done. With a setting of 0, only paths that are already perfectly aligned will remain perfectly aligned. I.e., nothing changes. You could enter a value up to 180 degrees, in which case every curved join will be smoothed. You can set this to any setting that gives you a satisfactory result.

A couple of under-the-hood changes that allow the plugin to run faster are less obvious. Most significant is a change that makes Concatenate smarter about which paths to consider for assimilation, which also solves a problem of occasional benign errors and their pesky dialogs, most noticeable when layers are hidden.

But wait, there’s more to come! Concatenate is often used with very large map or CAD files, and when it’s evaluating tens, or even hundreds of thousands of path segments, operations can take much more than the almost instant results we’re used to. For those situations, a progress bar will be added soon.

If you have observations about this update or ideas of any way Concatenate or Assimilate can be made better, please let me know. Remember, I’m an illustrator like you and, as Red Green used to say, “We’re all in this together.”

Isometric Line Tool for CC

Another free plugin! I really  can’t call it new because this one’s been a popular download for years, but it is still free. It does one simple function: it draws straight lines constrained to isometric angles (unless you hold down the shift key for 45-degree constraints or Option/Alt for no constraints), but this time, however, it’s a bit better. It borrows some functions from the Concatenate plugin so new lines are automatically  joined if they’re drawn from the endpoint of another.

You probably already know that isometric drawings are easier when you turn on Smart Guides with the 60-degree preset and construction guides checked. Combine this with the free Isometric Actions and isometric clipart, and that was pretty much my toolkit for technical and assembly drawings until I discovered CADtools. Isometric Line Tool, however, is still one of my main tools. I gave it the keyboard shortcut “Y” (naturally) and use it often for simple tasks.

Please feel free to download and try the Isometric Line Tool. I hope it serves you long and well!

Download Isometric Line Tool

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