Gear maker

I used PixelPerfect's method to get my drawing going. Fabulous. I'm hoping the Dev's can figure out what is happening and cure whatever bug is causing the problem. Seeing as the initial shapes were made in 1.7 with no conversion or import they should work.

Friksel, I tried closing the first shape in every group. Both Space and Distribute reacted no different for me than it had before.

Ah in the transform panel. Do you know if this "function" of the text path has worked for quite awhile? Still floored by this. Thanks again for showing us it.

PixelPest, okay how are you doing this. You are controlling it as though it was a character in a text path. How did you make the slat into a character? Wait so you just pasted it onto the text cursor. Crazy it took it. I had no idea that could be done! The tilt/shear entry in the character panel doesn't do anything, how are you tilting the slats? The baseline doesn't have any control either, but then I'm surprised anything works on this. But how are you tilting them at the end of the gif. I can see a lot of uses for this trick. Wow!

PixelPest, no I wanted them at the angle of the black bar. It worked for me to get everything straight. But not when trying to get it at an angle. Thanks for trying.

Bruce, thanks for trying. Makes me wonder... I guess I'll do it manually. Maybe someone else will have an idea. What's interesting is that it did almost a perfect opposite what it was supposed to do. Like it had reversed the location of the first and last slat.

Can anyone explain why when I select all the vertical black slats and do either a Layer > Alignment > Distribute Vertically or Space Vertically they come out like this? For extra credit, how can I get AD 1.7 to properly align them? Test5.afdesign I want them in a straight angled line (not a horizontal line) between the position of the first and last units. The items are all identical copies of each. They were made with a Power Duplicate almost in the correct locations and I just wanted to get them perfectly spaced. I appreciate any help on understanding this.

My concept for using the layer colors was to indicate which layers had certain attributes added that didn't normally show in the layer panel but the current rules won't allow it. Such as: If there is a gradient, especially a stroke gradient applied to that layer. If there is a second stroke or fill added by the Appearance panel on that layer. I find that I get myself in trouble by trying to do a color change that destroys a gradient because I didn't remember the layer had one. And it's even harder to identify a stroke gradient. I currently find that I always select the fill tool before doing a color change to make any gradient on that layer obvious. Also I find I try to change a color/luminosity which doesn't work because it's controlled by a secondary fill from the appearance panel. I've convinced myself that it's easier to create a second layer instead of using the appearance panel, which is what we've always had to do in the past but it is visible from the layers panel.

FYI I tried loading these 3 on my mac and they wouldn't even load saying insufficient permissions. But when I saved them to the desktop then drug them into the font directory everything was fine. They were automatically added to AD 1.7.

Could you have a black stoke assigned to it?

Thanks Aammppaa. I am curious has anyone come up with a plan on using the colors? If so how are you using them? I am looking for ideas.

I started setting colors to layers in the layer panel, one was Green if the layer had a Gradient. But I ran into a problem if the layer is a parent, it's then not possible to have the child layer to not have a color (indicating there is no special treatment on the layer). The color can be changed but not deleted. With this scheme I'd have to assign a color to mean "the child without a Gradient (special treatment) of a parent with a Gradient (special treatment)". It would be very handy to have the option to delete a color for child layers. Same for layers in a group or a Layer. If I have a layer that is just a shape and a solid color I doubt I would want to color the layer as everything about the layer is obvious from the thumbnail and the layer type. With a large drawing it would be hard to come up with a color for all the possibilities with only 7 colors, so obvious/simple layers would be best left without a color.

Gabriel, no 1.6 never had this. Even when working on the same files as I first saw it on. I didn't use the beta 1.7 versions very much, so I don't know which version it first showed up on.

Sean, FYI I have found that many of the keyboard shortcuts were missing from 1.7. Most noticeable were many tools like "I" for the color picker was missing. I did a reset of the shortcuts and they look to be compete now.

Yes, I shut down every night and it's still having the problem today.