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Vector pen and pencil lines drawn in Illustrator open as filled paths in Designer: can I stop this?!


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I have searched for an existing answer in the forums; it seems possible that this is related to my creating the original illustrator art using a stylus on a pressure sensitive Wacom tablet, even though the Illustrator tool was not capable of pressure sensitivity. The vector pen lines are NOT pressure-sensitive in Illustrator and there is no prgssure-sensivity setting for the Illustrator pen tool. Is there anything I can do in Illustrator CS6 or AFDesigner to prevent this or convert the paths back to vector lines? My half-finished maps will be a nightmare if not.

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The structure doesn't change when I do that: the line is still a very very long thin path defined by a continuous vector path border. Screenshot below. Note that what was a single 0.5pt vector pen line is now a filled path. If I simply swap fill for outline I get a pair of parallel lines with a thin area of fill between them. 

If I could actually *delete* one half of the path I could perhaps stroke the remaining line? But when I delete an anchor point using the white arrowhead pointer AFD rejoins the two anchors to each side of the one I deleted with a straight line. 

1101506428_IllustratorvectorpeninAFD.thumb.png.8ec06c28bddd3279fd798aa7031db0c5.png below. For emphasis: these were drawn as vector pen lines in Illustrator CS6. In the image below you can see the blue wireframe edge of what became a filled path when imported to AFDesign.

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Somehow the path/stroke has been expanded. Either by design or accident in Illustrator or by accident in Designer.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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I'm 99.5% sure it's an accident in Designer.
From what I've read – I've been doing a lot of reading of AFDesigner stuff since my old iMac died a couple of weeks ago -- AFDesigner's brushes are actually bounded shapes (paths) masquerading as vector brush strokes. AFD is just really good at showing them as brush strokes. So it makes some warped sense that the AFD engine interprets Illustrator pen strokes (single stroked lines) as shapes (paths bounding a long thin shape) when it opens a file created in Illustrator. But it's an awful, horrendous, scary bug for me, who does a massive amount of work using vector lines for mapping and vector brushes for hand-painting illustration. 

However, the good news is that I have discovered the 'Break Curve' tool. So, for future reference, if anyone else needs to convert what were vector lines from AFD's bounded paths back into vector lines the answer is:

  1. Select the two anchor points that form one end of your long thin was-a-line using the white anchor point working tool thing. 
  2. When both points are selected, use the 'Break Curve' button, on my machine it's the first one of the 'Action' buttons in the contextual menu bar across the top of the document. 
  3. Select the two anchor points at the other end of the long thin shape, break that curve too. The path magically becomes two parallel strokes. Delete one of them. It's not perfect -- the new vector line is not precisely the same shape as the original, but it's damn close. And will suffice for this project. 

But I may have to scrap any half-finished illustrations because I don't believe the pressure sensitive shape of the brush will be preserved/retained if I do the same to the shaped paths that replace my Illustrator brush strokes.

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6 hours ago, aizome said:

AFDesigner's brushes are actually bounded shapes (paths) masquerading as vector brush strokes. AFD is just really good at showing them as brush strokes.

Yes, only the simple strokes are vectors, and won't be converted to path if there's no pressure and the width stay identical.

 

6 hours ago, aizome said:

So it makes some warped sense that the AFD engine interprets Illustrator pen strokes (single stroked lines) as shapes (paths bounding a long thin shape) when it opens a file created in Illustrator.

No. It shouldn't. But it's possible that it's the way the strokes are converted in the PDF part of the AI file, since AD can only read this if the file include it, not the AI code.

The same way that AD convert stroke with pressure to paths when exporting to other vector formats.

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On 9/14/2021 at 11:03 PM, Fixx said:

If you create a path with Paintbrush tool in AI, it will be expanded in PDF part of AI file, even when it is single path in AI. Pen and Pencil tools keep as single paths. Appearance can be exact same with all these tools.

No (or at least not always). The line in my screenshot upthread was created using the Pen tool in Illustrator CS6. It is a single vector line in Illustrator. AFDesign imports it as a long thin path from both .eps and .pdf files. 

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