Why can't Illustrator's line segment tool make a stroke of .5 pt?

[Guest]

Why can't Illustrator's line segment tool make a stroke of .5 pt? When I create a line at either 90° or 180° I cannot make the stroke thinner than 1 pt., even if I create the line first and then try to change its stroke. When I create a line at any other angle I can make the line thickness whatever I want by changing its stroke thickness. What I want is to make line segments that are .25 or .5 pts, but the minimum Illustrator will do is 1 pt even if I select the line or rectangle and try to change it to .5 or .25 pt. This same problem exists with the rectangle tool when I create a rectangle oriented at either at 90° or 180°, but if I rotate that same rectangle to anything other than 90° or 180° I will then have the ability to change the thickness to less than 1 pt. Any ideas what's going on?

[Gernot_Hoffmann]

In CS2 it's the same bug, but it works correctly if I type

0,5 pt or 0,25 pt. Strange phenomenon.

Even 0,0 pt works, is shown as 0 pt. In PostScript termi-

nology this means the thinnest line  which the (- so far

unknown) output device can draw.

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

[Guest]

Hi Gernot, It didn't work for me (I'm using CS5). All values I tried whether less than 1, or greater, would not work if I used a comma instead of a period. Thanks for the input. - Ken

Hi emil, That works. Thanks. - Ken

[sonofmrsnak]

Hope this bug was fixed in CS6 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

Gernot,

In your case I believe it is owing to a discrepancy between the punctuation mark in the Regional & Language Settings in the OP and in Illy, one being the comma, the other being the dot/(full) stop.

[emil_emil · Accepted solution]

Select all objects and in the Transform panel uncheck Align to Pixel grid. Also if desired, uncheck this options for new objects from the menu of the Transform panel.

[DavidLaufer]

This fix works on some objects and not others, Still experimenting, but this is better. 

Is there a way to turn off "align to pixel grid" as the default for new documents? 

[Monika Gause]

Edit the new document profiles

[DavidLaufer]

Hi MG- thanks for this feedback, I use Illustrator daily, but I must say I have never seen Edit New Document Profiles. Does not appear under Edit, I don't find it in preferences, nor in Window, and it Illustrator Help does not seem to list it. Thanks again for the help... D

[Monika Gause]

The new document profiles are Illustrator files which are located at a very special place:

http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeillustrator/2009/05/startup_profiles_a_great_tool.html

[DavidLaufer]

Well, this is good information, but it does not quite get me there. I get as far as {user}:Library:Application Support:Adobe:

but there is no Adobe Illustrator folder. Suggestions?

I want to suggest they add Hyphenation to that list. I never hyphenate anything, and I can't count the number of times I have had to uncheck the hyph box in InDesign and Illustrator. Can you point me to the appropriate suggestion box? Thx D

[Larry G. Schneider]

What OS are you using? If Mac, then since 10.7, the Users/<yourname>/Library folders are a hidden file. Do a Google search on hw to make them visible.

[DavidLaufer]

Hi Larry thanks for this tip - for others who may be trying to solve this problem here is a link

<http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/access-hidden-user-library-files.html>

However, I am still not able to access my new document profile. I opened the basic RGB profile and all I get is a blank screen-  not the screen Monika shows in her link above. Does this really need to be so difficult??

[Monika Gause]

You now need to set the relevant options and then save it. Document profiles cannot contain anything on the artboard.