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Using an auxiliary view in AxoTools

Update: Now with AxoTools 16.2, there’s an easier way!

step 1

Every technical illustrator, it seems, eventually runs into a situation where a surface they’re drawing doesn’t exactly match the top, left, or right views. If one edge of a rectangle that defines that surface coincides with the X or Z axis, there are at least two ways to project that angled face. Let’s say you want to add a dial or knob to this control panel.

In conventional drafting, you’d draw what’s called an auxiliary view for the tilted panel, then mathematically calculate the locations of the panel’s elements in the axonometric (or isometric) view. One way might be called the “rotate and force-fit” method.

Here’s a sequence of steps that shows how that works, and illustrates the reason those four “Rotate” and “Unrotate” items were added to the flyout menu.

step Astep B

Step Cstep D

Of course, the axis of the ellipse is at a different angle than any axis, so here’s a method that uses axonometric logic to reverse-engineer the projection of that surface in order to use the Extrude tool to accurately draw the cylindrical shape of the knob.

step 2step 3

step 4step 5

step 6step 7step 8step 9

step 10

After this technique, be sure to restore your axonometric projection to the previous settings!

New tools are currently in progress for AxoTools, but until they’re available, this should help you get through some of those unusual situations.

If you have other tips, please share!

AxoTools video (Spanish)

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!

Windows UI scaling workaround

The newer, larger, higher-resolution displays are certainly a wonderful development for every illustrator and designer. For plugin developers, it also means we have to create icons and images used in the UI at several sizes including 100%, 150%, 200%, 400%, etc. Unfortunately, there’s no direct support for displays running under Windows that work at 125%. The problem is that panels display at 125%, but the controls within it are still scaled at 100%.

One workaround is to simply set your display to 100% in the Windows Setting > System > Display. This makes the few problematic panels display correctly, but this probably isn’t the setting you want for everything you do on your PC.

Another option is to override the DPI setting only for Illustrator. To do this, locate the Illustrator.exe app in the Programs folder, right-click its icon, and select Properties. In the Properties window, select the Compatibility tab, then click the button to Change high DPI settings. In this window, check “Override high DPI scaling behavior.” The interface isn’t as sharp as it would otherwise be, but some users may find this an improvement until a better method is available.
 
A better option for many is to let Adobe Illustrator take care of it. This dialog usually has a slider for UI scaling, where the smallest setting usually works best. If yours has the two radio buttons as shown here, set Illustrator’s User Interface preference to Scale to Higher Supported Scale Factor. With this setting, you won’t have to mess with the compatibility settings or deal with a blurred interface. If you normally have your display set to 125%, this can be very helpful.

If you have any tips to share, please submit them!

All CS3-CS5 plugins now FREE!

Graffix plugins for Adobe Illustrator CS3, CS4, and CS5 are no longer supported, but can be activated for free!

Just download the CS3-CS5 plugins you want, install them, then when prompted to register any of them, enter the following.

Name: Creative Suite User

Code: 5F-2474

Until you’re ready to move on to CS6 and the Creative Cloud, this ought to make work in the older versions a bit easier.

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.”

 

Whatever happened to the Proof Block plugin?

Some of you may recall a plugin called Proof Block. It ranked even below the Alien Palette in popularity, although I’ve used it myself at my day job for over 20 years. For the most part, it was little more than a small form to be initialed by people proofing various drafts of artwork prior to publishing. I was inspired to write it by the recurring problem we had of a copy-and-paste version that would sometimes peek back at us from a QuarkXPress graphic frame. My solution was to create a “proof block” layer, place the form on it, then the plugin set it to printable when opened in Illustrator, but non-printing and not visible when closing the document. Crisis solved!

Perhaps you’d still like something like that. It’s really not that difficult to write a script to draw the lines, boxes, and text, but I’m a staunch advocate of using a script, not a plugin, for that now. My proof block script today does everything that the plugin did, and much more. First, we have a document naming convention so the script can discern the magazine name, date, story code, and even look up the editors on its staff. It handles dates, keeps track of proof iterations, and even stores a record of the revision history in the document. When I save the document to the art server, the script saves a copy to the correct folder on the editorial server. If it’s a first draft, it fetches the illustrator’s name from Outlook, looks up the designer’s email and alerts her that art is available to place in InDesign. When the art is approved, it’s marked as such and the related editors, art director, and  designer are notified.

In addition, scripts check for missing fonts, placed art that should be embedded, look for RGB colors in a CMYK document, and more. It’s also much easier to revise than a plugin. Since everybody’s needs and workflow are quite different, it wouldn’t be useful to anybody to share my script, but I will share my enthusiasm for scripting it as one component of a larger process. I promise that once your custom script is used, you won’t look back.

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