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jamforfrances
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Can't stroke less than 1pt using "Basic" if a path is horizontal or vertical in CS5

Jul 29, 2010 9:56 PM

Hi all,

 

Something weird happened in Illy CS5 for me. I can no longer stroke lines [or shapes] using the "Basic" brush [the default stroke in Illy] with a stroke of less than 1pt [or its equivalent (like .376 mm for example)] if a line is either horizontal or vertical or if a shape has either a horizontal or vertical line in it. If I take a line that is diagonal and is stroked with a .25 pt stroke and I align it vertically, then the line stroke pops to 1pt. If I take that line and make it diagonal again, then I can change the stroke so that it is less than 1pt again.

 

Wha?

 

I have:

 

1. reset all my preferences [plist as well as CS5 prefs in folder]

2. restarted Illustrator [multiple times]

3. restarted my machine

 

With no luck. I still have the problem.

 

A bit before I noticed the problem, I changed a bunch of my unit preferences to millimeters as well as the units for the document and then changed them back to points. I would think that this might have something to do with the problem, but my husband went and did the same thing and didn't manage to incur the same problem.

 

Help!

13498 Views   9 Replies   Latest reply: VanynaV, Mar 21, 2012 11:21 AM
 
Replies
  • CupertinoFruit
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    1. CupertinoFruit,
    Jul 29, 2010 11:59 PM   in reply to jamforfrances
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    You are using a 'Web' or 'Flash Catalyst' Document profile, which has a property called 'Align New Objects to Pixel Grid' turned ON by default. This property can be found in the New Document dialog (under Advanced) or in the Transform panel flyout menu. This property helps in creating clean, sharp graphics for the Web & this is a new feature in Illustrator CS5.

     

    You can turn this OFF to create strokes (horizontal/vertical) with less than 1pt weight.

     
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  • [scott w]
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    2. [scott w],
    Jul 30, 2010 12:56 AM   in reply to CupertinoFruit
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    In reality though.... you should leave the align to pixel grid on and choose a different document profile in the future if you aren't creating a web graphic.

     
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  • jamforfrances
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    3. jamforfrances,
    Jul 30, 2010 10:27 AM   in reply to CupertinoFruit
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    Thanks so much!

     

    I often assume that I've done some obscure thing that has spawned a weird bug or something. But after resetting my preferences and restarting, it was hard to pretend that it was anything apart from some obvious and logical thing.

     

    And sure enough...

     

    Thanks a lot for the responses. It makes complete sense! Duh...

     
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  • carriestephens
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    4. carriestephens,
    Aug 15, 2010 5:07 PM   in reply to jamforfrances
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    I just had this problem.  When I reset my preferences file, under Unit/Stoke got set to pixels instead of points. Changing it back to points fixed it for me.

     
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  • chitchy
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    5. chitchy,
    Jun 14, 2011 9:16 AM   in reply to CupertinoFruit
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    Thanks, this solved my problem as well!

     

    The strange thing is that in the same document, while some line weights are restrained by 1pt, some objects with "align to pixel" ticked can still go under 1pt lineweight. The 1pt restrainer only happened randomly on certain new shape I created.

     

    Does anyone know a logical explanation?

     
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  • sanatdog
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    6. sanatdog,
    Nov 7, 2011 8:22 AM   in reply to jamforfrances
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    I have this problem with CS5. But I have nailed down reproduction of this behaviour.

     

    With stroke width set to points in prefs. to start with you can get lower than 1pt text in the line width setttings. So far so good.

     

    Then I selected the Pen. Set the line width to 0.25 and started to draw an arrow. It all worked until I drew the first acute angle in the arrow shape. And then Illustrator reset the width to 1pt.

     

    My solution was terrible. After 30 mins of frustration I just opened up Illustrator CS4. It worked.

     
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  • Creative PAD
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    7. Creative PAD,
    Jan 27, 2012 1:14 PM   in reply to CupertinoFruit
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    Thanks a lot! I was wondering about what was causing this "unwanted" behavior.

     

    I just took a copy of everything I had created, openened a new document (and remembered to uncheck the align to pixel grid) and then cmnd + f to paste everything at its original positions.

     
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  • paul tech
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    8. paul tech,
    Mar 7, 2012 8:35 AM   in reply to Creative PAD
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    I am having a weird stroke problem in CS3. If I stroke a path of .1 pt or less, the preview displays some sort of stroked path effect, even thou there is none applied. Wire frame preview looks fine. I have deleted prefs, howver this is happening on more than 1 Mac!

     
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  • VanynaV
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    9. VanynaV,
    Mar 21, 2012 11:21 AM   in reply to jamforfrances
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    I was having the same problem, what I did, following somebody's advice on this post solved it, ticked off the "Align to pixel grid" option for the object to stroke and it did it, the bad thing is that I'm actually working on a shape for a website, still it worked.

     
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