How do you erase stray points from Vector Draw import?

[paulm42257046]

Once I have finished a drawing in Adobe Draw App on my ipad I will send it through to Illustrator on my laptop. Once it arrives it usually has thousands of incidental stray points and occasional lines that don't show up on the original drawing on the ipad. This isn't a problem, so long as I can get rid of them.

In illustrator, when I go to Select - Object - Stray Points, nothing happens.

How do I get rid of all these stray points without having to spend hours lasso selecting them?

If I select all points, this is what the image looks like:

This is the thumbnail in the Illustrator menu:

[angie_taylor]

Draw a rectangle

over the area containing the points you don’t want. Place it on top of the artwork. Open the Pathfinder panel. Select all the artwork and the Rectangle and then click on the Crop button in the Pathfinder

[paulm42257046]

Hi theangietaylor, thanks for replying.
I am looking for a way to select and delete all the stray points, not just rectangle shaped sections of points

[Mohammad.Harb]

smart remove brush is very helpful ( it is a 3rd party plugin for illustrator from Astute graphics )

Smart Remove Brush in VectorScribe2 - Astute Graphics

[Monika Gause]

what do those objects have in common that the other objects dob't have?

are they filled differently?

do they have fewer points? there are scripts that can select by number of anchors.

you have to analyze and tell us or we can't help you.

[paulm42257046]

Hi Monika,

Most are single anchor points, the rest are up to five, with black fill and no stroke (like the main objects).
Thanks.

[Monika Gause]

Single anchor points can be deleted via the "stray points" command.

But 5 anchor points are already too many. There is a chance to be mistaken with parts of the drawing.

[paulm42257046]

The single anchor points aren't picked up by the select/object/straypoints button, nor by going through object/path/cleanup. It says 'no cleanup was necessary'.

[Monika Gause]

Try this script:

Scripting Illustrator: New Script "Select Paths By Size"

[paulm42257046]

I can't find the scripts on your website.

I've tried a couple from elsewhere, but they just give me the spinning wheel of death when I try to run them.

[Monika Gause]

In that case it might just be too many paths for scripts to handle.

Can you try the other way round? Select what belongs to the drawing, copy and paste into a new file?

[Larry G. Schneider]

Couple of quick questions. With everything selected, can you show the Document Info panel with Selection Only and Objects checked to get an idea of the number of objects we are dealing with? How long have you let the script you tried run?

[paulm42257046]

I ran the scripts for about 20 minutes.

[Larry G. Schneider]

OK, thanks for the information. From the info, you have no stray points.  My suggestion would be to try using the Direct Select tool (White Arrow) to drag a box selection around the areas outside the people and then delete the anchor points selected. Keep doing small sections at a time to get the number of objects down to something you can work.

[paulm42257046]

Ah this was what I was trying to avoid having to do. I have a lot of images and this will be days worth of work.

[angie_taylor]

I really think my suggestion would do what you need. When you place a rectangle over the image, at the size of the artboard. then use it with the Crop function, it will remove any points outside the rectangle, in essence cropping out everything outside your artboard. Is this not what you need to happen?

[paulm42257046]

I want to select all these incidental points, so I can delete them. They are all through the image, not just surrounding it.

[Monika Gause]

You might try:

Select everything outside using the lasso or direct selection tool and delete.

Select all

Use the pathfinder "Merge" (from the panel)

delete any invisible shapes (fill and stroke of none)

Now the stray shapes inside the drawing should be gone

Ungroup (a few times)

Maybe scripts will work now.

Don't expect to be able to edit this by pure magic and without manual work.

[paulm42257046]

Thanks Monika, I will have a go at this tomorrow.

[Monika Gause]

Thank you for the file.

I'm wondering what you did in Adobe Draw to get this. It normally doesn't produce single anchor points.

[Larry G. Schneider]

Monika, I've downloaded the file and am playing with it my self now. A couple of interesting points. All of the objects are closed paths so many have multiple anchor points, not just one. With drag selecting and deleting I got it down to about 26000 or so paths and I'm running my delete_schnibbles script to select all under 2x2 points. Right now it has been running just under an hour and has about 14000 points in the new delete array. Some seem to be parts of compound paths so will have to work with that later.

Larry

EDIT 2 hrs later      Here are some screen shots, first after running the script to select objects below 2 points either way

and then after deleting the objects selected

and finally after using Object>Path>Simplify

[paulm42257046]

Oh my gosh! Two hours!

[Larry G. Schneider]

That was just the script running.. No time involved for me; I was doing other things. Total time spent was probably under a half hour. I saved a copy of the cleaned up file pm me your email and I’ll send it on.

[CarlosCanto]

It may be worth trying Image Tracing as angie suggested. Here I exported as jpg then use Black & White Trace default settings.

[Kurt Gold]

Larry,

the Schnibbles script may be relieved a bit if you first select the remaining 26000 paths, then do an Object > Flatten Transparency, setting the Raster/Vector Balance to 100.

That should delete more than 20000 dust particles in a couple of seconds.