Shotster

Good to know. Thanks! 🙂

A fill can be added to an artboard, but not a stroke. Why not? You can specify a stroke, but nothing at all happens. 😕

This issue happened again, and I can't get the !X@#%$# toolbar back! Seems the toolbar is invisible and not where it should be on the screen. See attached animated GIF that depicts choosing Customize Toolbar from the View menu. The toolbar editor comes "out of nowhere". (Sorry for the poor quality, but I tried to keep the file size down.)

Ok, so I had apparently clicked on a layer that was outside all art boards, so the bleed outline appeared around the entire document. Perhaps that's the intended behavior? It does work as expected when individual art boards are selected - i.e. the outline appears around only that art board.

That worked! I'm back in business! (...except, of course, for having lost my custom settings) Thanks, @MEB and @Joachim_L!

Your answer implies that all artboards should have a bleed, albeit the same value. However, when I “show bleed”, I see an outline around the entire document - not around each art board.

Yes indeed, several times. Has no effect. It does not appear when not in separated mode either. EDIT: Oh wait, I’m not sure I tried toggling the context toolbar while not in separated mode. I’ll try that when I get to my machine. I have had an iPad connected to this machine via Sidecar, but not using AD per se. Maybe there’s an issue with AD and Sidecar?

Thanks, but no, it’s checked. I’m going to try nuking the prefs folder if I can find it.

I have already spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to get my font menu back in AD. The entire toolbar disappeared for some reason, and I managed to get it back (sort of) by resetting everything (control + restart app). However, the 2nd row of the toolbar, which contains the font menu etc. is nowhere to be seen! Anyone have any idea how to get it back? I'm at my wit's end. Everything is fine in AF, but AD just inexplicably flaked out. Something occurred at one point that led me to suspect that AD thought there was a touchbar present, but I'm on an iMac. Any suggestions?

Is bleed per document only, or can it be specified per artboard?

Thanks for the additional input! It's always good to get a fresh perspective! I fiddled some more, and it seems the KEY is simply to ensure that the stroke is aligned to center when initially adjusting the "thickness" of the text. I had the stroke set to "align to outside", and that results in a nightmare after expanding the stroke (at least for the font I was using). So for the record, the steps are as follows: Adjust the "weight" of some text using a center-aligned stroke. (It's KEY that it be CENTER-aligned!) Convert text to curves (command-return on Mac). Select all resulting layers (one layer for each letter) and choose Layer --> Expand Stroke. Now select all of those resulting layers (2 layers for each letter) and use the boolean Add operation. Bada bing!

Hey, thanks for the suggestions! I’ll give it a go when I get back. It would be sweet if it could be automated

Thanks for the reply. I think I tried that. As I recall, it didn't work as I expected - at least not with letters containing a "hole" (e.g. b, d, a, e, etc.). I'll double check when I'm back at my machine with AD, but I know I tried all the boolean operations. It's a bit frustrating because it seems the algorithm already exists in AD - i.e. the ability to create an "outline" (in the effects panel). I just need AD to effectively do the same thing but create a path which follows the outline.

I often find myself tweaking font weight by adding a stroke to text. Then, I can adjust as desired and not be limited by just the weights provided by the font (if any). This works great and is a nice way to visually "tweak" the font so that it fits the design. However, ultimately, I need to convert everything to curves and have a single path for each letter, and that's where it gets tedious. I generally proceed as follows: Convert the text to curves. Expand the stroke, which results in something like... Delete the "inner" portion, leaving just the stroke path as a curve. Put a rectangle behind the paths. Combine the rectangle and letters using a boolean "divide" operation. Manually "clean up" by removing unneeded curves and subtracting the inside portion of "closed" letters, etc. to wind up with this... Needless to say, this is quite tedious. Is there a better way to either tweak the font weight or convert an expanded stroke to a single path? Basically, I want a path that represents the "outline" of the letter, yet there doesn't seem to be an automated way to get it. Any suggestions?

Thanks, @walt.farrell, I did see your earlier posts, and they were helpful. The reason it wasn't working for me was this.