PopArt symbols can be dragged from a symbols panel and AxoTools will automatically expand them to fit your choice of axonometric planes in your current document projection. This includes extruded art, art with compound rotations, and with moves along axes.
For example, say you’re building an axonometric village and you want awnings over some of your windows. Rather than build them, or copy and paste them from a previous project, you can store one as a PopArt symbol and drag them into your document as needed.
You’re not limited to just isometric, either. PopArt will expand and conform to any face in any document projection you set, including an auxiliary projection.
PopArt can contain several layered objects at various angles. In this illustration, only two PopArt chairs created the four seen here, and the table with umbrella is all one symbol.
Please see the AxoTools documentation for more information on creating and using AxoTools PopArt symbols. And please let me know if you create PopArt symbols you’re willing to share with others!
Several new features in AxoTools make the Transformations panel more flexible and easier to use.
Live preview of extruded art shows your shading and stroke widths.
Select several Transformations objects at once and change all of their orientation settings. This works best if they all share a common anchor point so that they all “move” together.
You can now expand several Transformations objects at once, rather than one-by-one.
Transformations objects can now embed properties from the Draw Settings panel. In this example, the tan box is divided into four layers, and the blue cylinder is set as seated against another surface.
To embed custom settings, check the option “Art has custom draw settings.” The info boxes in the Draw Settings and Transformations panels will display a blue circle to indicate that the settings chosen apply only to the selected object. These fields will otherwise display a document or globe icon to indicate whether the current Draw Settings are global defaults or are saved locally in the document.
Please note that the fill method is still applied globally, though, to ensure that the color and shading are consistent across all art in the document.
These features are new in AxoTools plugin for Adobe Illustrator version 25.0.2, now available for download.
Illustrator users know that we need panels to access controls and options, but it quickly fills valuable working screen space. Collapsing panels to icons helps, but repeatedly opening and closing them can be a hassle, as well. One option Adobe brilliantly engineered for Illustrator is the control bar that shows a limited number of essential controls consolidated into in a thin strip.
The newest version of AxoTools now includes a control bar as well. You can access it in the menu Window > AxoTools > AxoTools Control.
The first item shows at a glance the projection of the current document. Double-click it to open the Projection panel to change it. Next is a label showing the current document’s scale ratio and units used in AxoTools’ panels that calculate scale measurements. Again, double-click the label to open the Preferences dialog to change the scale or units.
Next is a series of four buttons to project or unproject art, which work exactly like the buttons in the Projection panel.
The next set of four buttons control options that affect projecting and other functions. The first one selects whether reference points are used. This one has a blue background when active to make it easier to spot since you would normally want to keep this option off unless you are busy projecting art from various ortho views to an axonometric view as described here.
The next option controls whether to automatically project a copy of the selected art. The third button chooses whether to rotate ellipses so that the anchor points align on the major and minor axis when projected. Fourth is the option to apply properties in the Draw Settings panel when projecting art.
At the far right is a shortcut to open AxoTools’ online documentation.
Are there other items you would like to see included here? They could static like these controls, or dynamic — visible only under some conditions. Let me know what you need!
One of the new features in AxoTools is adding fastener libraries in the form of specially-formatted symbol libraries. AxoTools comes with a fastener library, and you can add others. Industrial Artworks has already created a library of nearly a hundred high-quality fastener symbols, which is available for purchase.
To install AxoTools’ symbol library, open the AxoTools Fasteners panel. In its flyout menu, select the item to Update “AxoTools Fasteners.ai” file.
A dialog will ask you to confirm whether you really want to install it. Click the OK button, or press Escape to cancel..
You will probably get a message that the file and folder cannot be created in the Symbols folder. Click the Yes button to create it on your desktop.
You should now see a folder named “AxoTools Symbols” on your desktop. Navigate to your Symbols folder, located in your Adobe Illustrator application folder in Presets > [Language] > Symbols, and copy the “AxoTools Symbols” folder here. Your operating system will ask you for permission to copy the file. If you look in this folder, you’ll see one Illustrator file named “AxoTools Symbols.ai” which you can open to see the available symbols and read instructions on how to create your own fastener symbols. If you purchase an additional symbol library or create your own, this is where the file should be placed.
Restart Illustrator. On launch, AxoTools will look for this folder to load fastener symbols into their corresponding menus in the Fasteners panel. If you also install the Industrial Artworks symbol library, your Screw variations menu should look like this:
The divider separates generated symbols drawn for any projection from the symbol-based fasteners, which are typically drawn in isometric. The two slotted hex screws and two drywall screws come with AxoTools. The items identified with “IA” are from Industrial Artworks.
Please let me know how your experience goes with installing, using, and perhaps creating fastener symbol libraries.
AxoTools has added a new Fasteners panel to help you quickly create fasteners of common types and sizes, scaled to fit your document.
Check the fasteners you want to create and choose a variation in the menus, then select a size from the list of presets. If you’re creating a bolt or screw, enter a shank length. The hole can be created either with or without matching threads.
Choose one of the four available axonometric faces and click the “Create fastener(s)” button.
These options also define the fasteners created with the Axo Fastener tool.
Click or drag the Fastener tool to create a set of fasteners rotated to any of your document’s axes, and sized to your document’s scale.
Built-in fastener selections include 17 types of nuts, bolts, and washers drawn as path art in your document’s projection — that’s any projection, as it is not limited to only isometric.
In addition, 14 other fasteners are included in a symbol library that you can use as-is, modify, or add your own custom fasteners. Threaded shanks are automatically added to screw/bolt heads and threaded holes are added to nuts. If you’re using multiple stroke widths, the stroke widths of the fastener symbols are changed to your standard widths and the symbols expanded to fully-editable art.
Extensive, professionally-drawn symbol libraries will also be available soon from other sources.
These new features are available now in a free update to AxoTools.
The newest (free) update to ToolShed plugin for Adobe Illustrator adds menu items for isolation, which enables you to isolate items such as text objects that otherwise cannot be isolated, and you can even enter isolation mode with nothing selected to begin work in a new blank isolated space. In addition, you can now assign keyboard shortcuts to navigate isolation mode, and even record these steps in Actions.
Object > Isolate
Begin Isolation: With nothing selected, Illustrator will enter isolation mode at the top level of the current layer, ready for you to paste or create new art. With an object selected, Illustrator will enter isolation mode as usual, except that if the object type cannot be isolated by Adobe Illustrator, it will be placed into a temporary folder and that folder will be isolated. Note: Only one item at a time can be isolated, so if you select multiple objects to isolate, only one of them will be chosen to isolate.
Isolate Parent Object: If the item you have isolated is part of a group, this will isolate the group that contains the currently isolated art.
End Isolation: This works exactly the same as the native Illustrator counterpart, but is included here to allow you to assign a keyboard shortcut or include it in an Action.
When recording Actions, use Insert Menu Item to include these functions.
These new menu items are FREE, no activation required.
Changing the stacking order of objects has been addressed in ToolShed’s free menu items to arrange them by location or size, but many people simply wanted to reverse the order in which objects were layered. They also wanted to preserve the objects’ original locations across different layers and with other art objects between them. ToolShed’s new Reverse Stacking Order menu item provides that in this new free function.
Object > Arrange > Stacking Order> Reverse Stacking Order
ToolShed contains a few tools that require activation to continue to work after the trial period, but like most of the functions in ToolShed, this menu item is entirely FREE. You can download it now for Mac and Windows, CC 2019 through 2023.
ToolShed has added three new items, all of which are FREE.
Replace with Top Object
The first new item is a function to replace selected art with a different art object. For example, say you have six blue circles that you want to replace with gold stars. Make sure that the star is the topmost object, located above the others in the layer panel.
Select the menu item Object > Replace with Top Object. The blue circles will be replaced with gold stars, like this:
Here you see six stars, but in the Layers panel, there are seven. What’s up with that?
The star was identified as the reference art, and the six circles below it became target art. Each target object was replaced, so you now have a duplicate star under the original reference art. Your reference art could be something used in some other part of your illustration, so this behavior is often useful. This time, however, press Alt or Option as you select the menu item, and the reference art will be deleted after all substitutions have been made. The new art will be positioned centered over the target art.
This menu item is FREE, no activation required.
Bust Up Paragraphs
We quite often have a text file with a list of callouts or labels to add to an illustration. We can re-type them in Illustrator, copy and paste each item one at a time, or paste the text into Illustrator and run a script to separate each line into individual point text objects. I wrote an AppleScript for this about 30 years ago (really) and later made an InDesign version for my colleagues doing page design. I’m guessing it’s probably not too soon 😉 to incorporate this into a plugin menu item. If you select one or more text objects, either point text or area text, it will divide them into several point text objects which you can then move individually as needed.
Paragraph alignment, paragraph styles, character styles, and character formatting are supported.
This menu item is FREE, no activation required.
Bracket tool
This one could have been called a “Brace” tool, but that could be taken in other ways.
For way too long, I’d made these braces/brackets by separating the four bezier curves of a circle and rearranging them as needed. Now ToolShed has a tool that does essentially that same process. Just select the tool and drag to create it to the size you need.
As you drag, you can hold the Alt/Option key to flip it the opposite direction, and/or Shift to constrain it to the nearest 45° angle. Your curve radius is displayed in the on-screen help text, but you can adjust it dynamically by pressing the Up/Down keys. The increments it uses, in combination with Shift and Alt/Option, can be set in ToolShed’s Preferences. There you can also set the default stroke width for this path, as well as the Radiant and Latitude Lines that ToolShed draws. That dialog can be called in the same menu area as other Illustrator and plugin preferences, or by double-clicking the Bracket tool.
This tool is FREE, no activation required.
You can download the free update to ToolShed now. It’s available for Adobe Illustrator CC 2019 through 2023, for Windows and Mac (Apple processor support for 2022-23).