Vector Brush Adding Strokes to Curves When Selecting

[awakenedbyowls]

So I'm drawing objects. I trace a rough shape with the Pen Tool, then I select the Vector Brush Tool with a view to drawing round the edges with a Solid Pen to create a more natural effect with a view to Expanding the Stroke and adding to the object I just drew with the Pen Tool using the Boolean tool.

Only when I select the Vector Brush tool and then select the brush I want there it goes every time plonking a big fat black stroke round the object I just traced!

This is not what I'm asking the software to do. Why is it doing this???

[walt.farrell]

Make sure you select the Vector Brush Tool before you select the brush shape you want from the Brushes panel.

The behavior you're describing matches what would occur if you select the brush shape while you still have the Pen Tool selected.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

The behavior you're describing matches what would occur if you select the brush shape while you still have the Pen Tool selected.

Or the Node or Move tool selected. Basically, with any of these tools & a vector path object selected you are telling the app that you want to change the path's stroke to that of whatever vector brush you then select.

Very useful if that is what you want to do but not if you do not understand that is how it is programmed to work.

[awakenedbyowls]

Yup. I'm sure it's all of the above and I'll figure this thing out some day. You get into a flow with it and then out of the blue it starts not doing what it's told. And then you start thinking it's a bug, but it's probably not. 

[R C-R]

38 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

You get into a flow with it and then out of the blue it starts not doing what it's told.

At least in this case it is doing what it is told ... it is just that it isn't what you think you have told it to do. That is because here, as in many other places in the UI, the order in which you do things determines what if anything happens next.

Sometimes, it is all too easy to overlook that.