How can I force a smooth join and change a shortcut?
Joanna Olsen Nov 5, 2013 1:54 PMI am from Denmark so pardon me if I misspell something and I work on a Mac so the shortcuts and menus are for Mac, but you are clever people, so you can probably figure out what it will be on a Windows computer
I was having trouble in Illustrator CS6 joining two points smooth. I read this article ...
http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeillustrator/2011/06/join.html
... about joining in Illustrator CS5 (which seems to be the same in CS6) ... and noticed it says "A Smooth join is possible only when the end-points are smooth" ... now who came up with this asshat rule (pardon my french)??? I used to be able to force a joining to be smooth no matter what kind of points I had, however, not anymore it seems
This is what I had trouble with:
Smooth joins
Step 1.
As you can see in the image below I have two points both with an arm ... they should qualify as smooth end-points, right?
Step 2.
So after moving the two paths together I went ahead and selected the two points with my Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow). Notice how only one arm sticks out all of a sudden (this was actually a clue to why I had trouble in the first place but more on this later).
Step 3.
I tried to force the two points to join smoothly by using the cmd+opt+shift+J shortcut to get the Average & Join dialog box up and select Smooth ... to no avail.
Step 4.
It stil ends up doing this weird joining (this is after I tried to move the point with my Direct Selection Tool).
Step 5.
So I used cmd+Z until I was back to square one and then I discovered if I moved one of the end-points there was another one beneath it. Notice that it is the point that was missing an arm in step 2, when I had selected what I thought was only two points, which should have clued me in.
Removing the extra point and placing the two smooth end-points on top of each other again made it possible to make the smooth joining, I had tried to do countless times.
What I wonder about now is the fact that I could get the Average & Join dialog box without having Illustrator complain up a storm about me having selected more than two points? Illustrator used to be very picky about this, which would have made me discover the extra point way sooner.
Shortcuts
In the article I also noticed people complaining about the four keys shortcut for the Average & Join dialog box (cmd+opt+shift+J). You can just go ahead and change that in Edit/Keyboard Shortcuts... (cmd+opt+shift+K). Here is how:
Step 1.
In the dropdown change Tools to Menu Commands.
Step 2.
Go to Other Objects ... there you will find Average & Join. Go ahead and clear the shortcut and press whichever shortcut you wish for. I chose cmd+J, because I wish to use this method more often than Join. After this you get the option to Go To Conflict ... I did that and gave Join the shortcut shift+cmd+J and ended up giving Justify Text Left the shortcut cmd+opt+shift+J ... yeah, I seldom use the shortcut for Justify Text Left anyway.
Step 3.
I saved my new custom shortcut set with the name "Adobe Illustrator CS6 Shortcuts" ... that way I can search for the file and take it with me in case I need it on another computer and the name tells me which version it is for.
That's all from me ... I hope, this helps











