illustration

December 23, 2024

AxoTools’ improved inverted extrude modes

Sometimes we need to extrude a shape as negative space, that is, space cut out of some other material. This was recently added to AxoTools, but with the latest free update, it’s now improved with three modes or variations on how to do this.

Extrude modes Recessed appears as a depression in a surface, similar to the “debossed” effect in Photoshop. AxoTools draws side walls and a back plane.

Cutout appears to cut the shape out of some thin material and move it backward.

Open appears as a hole in some material by drawing side walls, but leaving the back open.

All three modes add a mask to fit the size and shape of the opening.

If the inverted art needs to simulate an opening in a colored shape, you can check the option to “Add white background behind art.” This adds a white fill to the mask; otherwise, any colored art behind the extruded art will show through in Cutout or Open modes.

See the AxoTools online documentation for more information.

You can download AxoTools plugin for Adobe Illustrator, with 1,000 trial uses before purchasing.

November 29, 2024

Totallypic plugins available in English (free download)

Rick Johnson

The plugins

Graffix is pleased to be chosen as the only authorized distributor for English versions of two free plugins from Totallypic. Requires Adobe Illustrator 2025 for Mac or Windows.

Fit Selection

Similar to the built-in Fit Artboard in Window command, you can use it via the menu View > Fit Selection to quickly fit the selected objects to the window size. Pairing it with a keyboard shortcut can significantly enhance your workflow efficiency.

Perceptual Gradient

This uses the OKLab algorithm to convert standard linear gradients into perceptual interpolation. The results are similar to the gradient effects offered by Adobe Photoshop. You can find it under Effects > Totallypic > Perceptual Gradient, or apply it via the f(x) option in the Appearance panel.

The back story

Jeen Hung and I have for years exchanged ideas about Adobe Illustrator and how plugins add to its capabilities. Several of the features added to my plugins were suggested by Jeen. He’s done some amazing illustrations and later studied writing his own AI plugins. Jeen provided the code for Select Menu that finds more recently-added art objects such as intertwined objects and mirrored repeats. He has continued to develop plugins for use at his business, Totallypic, and has made them available at his website. Recently, he has generously created English versions for me to distribute here.

Totallypic logo

About Totallypic

Totallypic is a design team from Taiwan specializing in vector illustration and design. Over the past decade, we have focused on creating and licensing royalty-free graphics, achieving over 10 million downloads globally. Recently, we have also expanded into Illustrator online tutorials and plugin development, although these services are currently only available in Taiwan.

Download Totallypic plugins

February 20, 2024

New PopArt live symbols for AxoTools

Rick Johnson

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.

PopArt demo

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 turn values

table, chairs, umbrella

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!

July 25, 2023

ToolShed adds Isolation menu items

Rick Johnson

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.

May 30, 2023

Reverse Stacking Order added to ToolShed (free)

Rick Johnson

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.

May 18, 2023

ToolShed adds Bracket tool, plus free Replace Art and Bust-Up-Paragraphs functions

Rick Johnson

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).

November 9, 2022

Multiple line weights in technical illustration

Rick Johnson

You may have seen a recent video summarizing methods to use multiple line weights in your illustrations.

It’s probably helpful to go into a bit more detail and show more examples.

Using a single line weight (or “stroke width” as it applies to Illustrator’s path art property) is a simple and efficient way to work.

By using more than one line weight, however, your illustrations can have more interest and suggest form.

One method assumes a light source in the upper left. Here edges facing away from the light are given a heavier weight. This was the standard where I worked at Kalmbach Publishing Co. in the 1970s. My mentors there told me it was adopted from a standard for US Patent Office drawings. It was easy to apply using pen and ink, but when they switched from Rapidograph pen to Adobe Illustrator in the 1990s, they switched to a single line weight. Adobe Illustrator, unfortunately, doesn’t lend itself well to multiple line weights, especially if the path is filled.

Here’s an example of an illustration I did using the “Kalmbach” method, drawn in ink at 1.5 times reproduction size. Detail lines were drawn with a 4×0 Rapidograph pen, and the heavy lines were probably a no. 0 or 1 pen. In those days, we typically cut an Amberlith overlay to add a flat tint to the background, which helped separate the subject from the background.

A more common method called “line contrast shading” used in exploded-view parts drawings uses heavier lines on all outside edges of objects. In this example, the bottom of the cube and cylinder are thin lines because they represent the joint between two surfaces. A heavy line would suggest the objects float above the other art. In the case of the round hole, a varied line width makes a smooth transition between the front- and rear-facing edges. Complex illustrations can use three or four line weights. Standards are more like guidelines, actually, that vary between people and between businesses, often based largely on the personal preference of someone with experience and/or influence.

Greg Maxson drew these filter illustrations with pen-and-ink on Mylar for Hyster Co. back in the late 80’s. He explained, “You could really get lost in the detail with pen-and-ink. Lines within an object are thin, exterior object lines are heavier, and exterior object lines that are down and away from the light source are heavier and darker still. The heavying up of the lines down and away from the light source was typically used when illustrating larger equipment, machinery, etc. to give those objects more visual weight. Appropriate for rendering a bulldozer, but less appropriate for rendering the exploded illustration of an ink pen, for example. Of course, super thin interior object lines were/are common when used to represent less than 90 degree radii, and thin broken lines to represent a highlight along an edge, knurling, screening, etc.”

Greg used a three weight treatment on this Raptor suspension illustrations for Car and Driver magazine.

One more piece by Greg Maxson shows his skill at technical illustration using a variety of software, often including SketchUp, Illustrator, and others. Here he adds clarity to the subject with varied line weights, line colors, sometimes sketchy line treatments, and meaningful shading and textures in filled areas.

When AxoTools adds add multiple line weights, it places stroked paths above non-stroked filled paths so weights can change as needed anywhere along the object without affecting the fill. With a simple click of the Axo Line tool, you can toggle weights between thick and thin as necessary. In the coming months, users can expect to see more refinements in AxoTools handling of stroke properties. Please contact me if you have ideas that can make your work faster or easier.

September 12, 2022

AxoTools gradient shading

Rick Johnson

The latest update to AxoTools includes three improvements to shaded fills on extruded art. First, curved paths now have a gradient fill to more accurately show the curvature of the surface.

Second, the lighting is based on the location of a theoretical light source, so surfaces are shaded based on their actual orientation relative to the light, and no longer assigned a simple “top,” “left,” or “right” tint or shade.

Third, the light source is user-definable.

When you extrude a path, its fill color is used as the base color for shading values. For each base color AxoTools uses, it creates a gradient that’s stored in the document’s Swatches panel. To use your own gradient for shade values, just fill your starting object with the gradient and extrude it.

There is also a new panel where you can make adjustments to your light and shading, but it’s important to stress that you don’t ever have to fuss with those controls in order to use the new lighting and shading features. Most of you will probably want to stop reading here and just go download the update!

More for “explorers”

For those other few people in the room who want to take things a notch or two higher, the new panel works in three areas:

Gradient colors
Light location
Lighting properties.

At the top of the panel is a series of five color well widgets that represent the five stops on the shading gradient ramp for your current document color. The gradient itself represents the range of all possible colors to apply to your fills. AxoTools generates a shaded gradient ramp for each fill color you start with when you extrude with the shading option enabled.

The gradient represents the range of possible tints and shades available based on the angle of the lighting. The first gradient stop represents the lightest highlight color where the light hits it at a 90° angle. Using the default settings, the angle of light on the left isometric plane falls very close to the second stop, which is set to the original color. The third stop represents the shade when the light hits an object on its edge, and stops 4 and 5 represent the rear surfaces, with the last stop showing the effect of backlighting.

The light source’s location is defined with the familiar Tilt and Turn adjustments, which are relative to the viewer. Following these are slider controls for the light intensity, ambient light, and amount of backlighting. As you make adjustments to the lighting properties, the color wells along the top of the panel will preview the results of changes to the intensity, ambient, and backlight lighting properties.

At the bottom right, the “Reset to defaults” button will restore the default settings for all slider controls.

Below the color wells are two buttons relating directly to them. The “Rebuild gradient” button will generate five shades of the current document color.

The “Save gradient” button, I’ll confess, was included for the true “explorers.” If you changed the colors in the color well controls, either by changing lighting properties or using the color pickers in the color wells, this will overwrite the gradient ramp used for the base color.

Please see the online documentation for more information.

I hope you find this new feature useful!