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A new Cleanup Tool plugin is coming soon

You’ll probably find this most useful if you sometimes need to clean up CAD or GIS files, or tidy up artwork done by “other” people.

Click:

• On an endpoint or intermediate anchor point to delete it
• On a path segment to add an anchor point

Shift click:

• On an endpoint or intermediate anchor point to make it a corner point and collapse its handles
• On a control point to make its anchor a corner point (no change in the location of the control points)
• On a path segment to make the adjoining anchor points corner points and collapse the control handles for that segment

Option/Alt click:

• On an endpoint to extend its control handle
• On an intermediate anchor point to make it a smooth point and rotate the control handles to become tangent
• On a control point to rotate it to become tangent to the adjacent segment’s control handle
• On a path segment to make its anchor points smooth, extend the control handles, and rotate the handles to become tangent to adjacent beziers

Shift-Option/Alt click:

• On an endpoint does nothing
• On an intermediate anchor point toggles it between a corner and smooth point
• On a control point toggles its anchor point between a corner and smooth point

So, essentially, clicking adds/deletes points, shift clicks make things angular, Option/Alt clicks make things smooth, and shift-option toggles them.

When the tool’s cursor is over a selected path, its control handles will be highlighted even if Illustrator currently doesn’t display them, and anchor points will be marked with a square for corner points or a circle for smooth points.

Dragging a control handle adjusts it, constrained to its original angle.

Dragging a selected anchor point will move it, constrained to the path’s tangent angle, even if it’s under other art objects.

Shift-drag a control point or anchor point to constrain its movement to each increment of 45 degrees.

Drag a segment to find another path to assimilate. A smoothed segment will be added connecting the two paths.

Feel free to download and try out the beta version for Adobe Illustrator CC 2018, Mac or Windows 64-bit.

Report a bug and get it free! Make a suggestion, and perhaps I’ll make it so. Enjoy!

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!