[Rick Johnson]

I’m sorry to hear about your father, Egor. It’s a valid concern about the plugins continuing to work. In case something happens where I’m unable to continue supporting the plugins, I do have a continuity plan.

Plugins only expire under two conditions, when an annual license expires, or when a beta version reaches its expiration date. That date is typically about two months from the date it was released, which should not be a problem if new versions continue to be released, but that’s not always possible. I can set the expiration date out farther, but I hesitate to remove it because people may continue to run a beta version for a long time, thinking it’s a release version, and miss important updates in the future.

As explained above, beta plugins will continue to load when they expire, and the “Check for updates” process will offer the option to download the newest release version instead of the beta.

Any suggestions for improvements on that logic will be seriously considered. Thanks for your input!

[Rick Johnson]

I’ve made some changes that will take effect with the next beta build. Currently the plugin will not load if it has expired, which means you cannot get to the About Box to download an update. In the future, expired betas will still load. Also to come, when you check for an update in a beta version, the dialog will read something like “Alt-click Get Update to download the release version instead of beta.”

Would it be helpful to add an undocumented behavior where Alt/Option clicking the Get Update button in a release version will fetch the beta version instead?

[Rick Johnson]

I’m sorry about the expiration surprise — didn’t expect to go this long without an update. I give each beta an expiration date so people update when a newer beta or a release version becomes available. I uploaded new betas last night, so if you go to the About Box and check for updates, you’ll get a dialog to download it.

I should have engineered that better. When a plugin expires it should check for an update and should also get the release version if there’s no beta available. If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

[Rick Johnson]

Does the problem happen more often when shaded fills are used? I’ve noticed with the live extrude using the Transformations panel that changing colors on a shaded object causes it to leave “junk” paths behind when it redraws.

[Rick Johnson]

Thanks, Oleg, I still can’t reproduce the bug, under either Mac or Windows. Does it happen to you every time? Is there a certain situation where it happens, like when you snap to an anchor point of another path when extruding? I noticed that sometimes the first time I use the Extrude tool it doesn’t extrude anything, but after that it works.

I’m sorry that the beta extrude function still doesn’t have good support for compound paths. The extrude function here is being revised to work in any direction, not just along an axis. If you need to revert to the release version to finish a job, please download it from the web site. I can see it would be helpful to make it easier for users to switch between beta and release versions.

Can other users weigh in on this? Does this happen for you also?

[Rick Johnson]

Thanks, Oleg! I haven’t seen this before, but that’s something I’d like to fix as soon as possible. I can’t reproduce it, though. Can you please email me a sample file with just that art you’re extruding? Thanks!

[Rick Johnson]

Hi J.B.,

Tools for making top and side views match each other has crossed my mind, too! Please give some thought to how such a tool might work. Maybe draw guides at some selected art’s horizontal and vertical extents?

Others have suggested a grid, also, but I really don’t see a lot of value in duplicating CADtools’ features, for a number of reasons. There are a lot of new features to create first! That said, what do you think of the idea of snapping art along an axonometric grid as it’s moved or created?

Applying AxoTools to perspective is a definite possibility, something Ron and I plan to explore in the near future.

[Rick Johnson]

Yes, this is the place for feedback, thank you! I’m sorry for the delay — I just now saw that your message was here.

The Undo problem is a valid concern, and one I’ve been researching for quite some time now with no solutions. As you’ve probably noticed, each time the artwork state changes, Illustrator increments another Undo state. It seems to me there must be a way to “bookmark” a certain state and return there if the user chooses. If I find a way, I’ll certainly enable that.

[Rick Johnson]

Great idea, Ron. I mean Vector. 😉

I’ve edited the original post to include a drop-down menu for preset rotations. Of course, users need to understand that these rotations would relative to the starting Front view, so then putting this into an Axo orientation may give unexpected results.

[Rick Johnson]

I’m sorry, Egor, the whole forum software is new to me. There’s a plugin to allow inline images, but it doesn’t work at all in Safari on Mac. There’s also an anti-bot rule that you have to wait a few seconds between posts, but that shouldn’t affect uploading images (I’d think…).

Maybe for a while it would be helpful to compose longer reports as an email to me, then copy/paste it into a post? I’m using bbPress, which is a very common platform, but if it continues to misbehave, I can change. Older posts may get lost, but it simply must be functional.

If anyone has trouble with the forum, please let me know!

[Rick Johnson]

Oh no! I hope this was a fluke, never to happen again! I’m so very sorry.

[Rick Johnson]

Thanks Egor, that’s very helpful.

1. I’m unable to reproduce this. Maybe it happens when the default value is initialized the first time the plugin is used, but I don’t think that’s the case for you. Are you working in a large-format document? There are some areas where large format support is sketchy. Let’s hope the bug stays gone…

2. I can’t reproduce  the decimal bug, either, in Mac or Windows, but will watch for it.

3. Ron might need some time to figure out how to curve those paths to fit on a soccer ball sphere. 😉

4. The problem with the ellipse is that you can’t really tell which half of it is toward the front, so it can easily be interpreted as opposite what it should be. Maybe a better way will become obvious later, but at least for now you can see better the rotation arc and its inclination (providing the arc isn’t seen on edge).

5. The Add/Update button now displays Add or Update as appropriate.

6. Sorry, I can’t help with the duplication script. The CORE libraries I use have a duplicate function for art objects, but it doesn’t work correctly on what CORE calls “custom art” or Adobe calls “plugin art.” According to Adobe’s SDK, the contents of the object are not actually contained within the parent object, but in some other location in memory with pointers in the object. Duplicating it the way other art is duplicated resulted in two objects with their contents scrambled together, so I approached it by creating a new object, then copying the contents of the original, one by one, into the copy. These objects do help keep things “interesting.”

7. The current build now changes the menus to undo/redo Projection as well as Transformation from their respective panels.

8. The tip text displays OK for me with Illustrator 2021 and Windows 10. Does this happen intermittently for you or only occasionally? If I can find the conditions that cause it to happen I can submit a bug report to CORE, since only they can fix it. This may be somehow related to the problem of alerts sometimes popping up behind the splash screen on startup in Windows. I worked around that by making the plugin check for updates only after (and if) the plugin has actually run, delaying it to after startup.

Thanks for your help!

— Rick

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