adobe illustrator cs6 scripting reference javascript – Latest commit

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Adobe Illustrator CC Scripting Reference: JavaScript. If this guide is distributed with software that includes an end user agreement, this guide. Illustrator supports multiple scripting environments (including Microsoft Visual Basic, AppleScript, JavaScript, and ExtendScript). You can use.
 
 

Automation with scripts in Illustrator –

The followings are a list of them and their default values. This script may help to create Metaball-like shapes “Metaball Arc ” uses arcs to connect.

Adjust the values in the dialog. Then click OK. This is a simple sample script that merges overlapping anchors on the path. If the width and the height are equal, it turns into a circle.

You can specify the number of the anchor points before the script modifies the paths. You can use this script in the case if you want to draw a circle or an oval which has the number of the anchor points other than four.

Draw a circle with the ellipse tool, select it, run this script, input the number and you are done. Then write out them on the artboard as text object. This script uses JavaScript’s “length” property of PathItem. It seems that the difference is 0.

Especially for the corners at the intersection point of curves, this script may work better than “Round Corners” filter but slower. So it works only with CS3 or later. Select the anchor s or whole path s to round. Run this script. Rounding Method Basically, the rounding method is compatible with the “Round Corners” filter. It is to add two anchors instead of the original anchor, at the points of specified line length from each selected corner.

So if there’re too many anchors on original path, this script can not round nicely. Radius Actually, the specified “radius” is not for a radius of arcs which drawn. It is for the line length from each selected corner and is for the base to compute the length of handles. The reason calling it “radius” is for compatibility with the “Round Corners” filter. This script does not round the corners which already rounded. This script does not work for some part of compound paths. The function of the script had implemented in the recent versions of Ai.

The old UI version of the script that uses scriptUI. It seems that it is rarely usable. Just added as extras. For its purpose, when adjacent segments of an anchor of the target path have a difference in length — a rectangle like above, for example –, this script splits the path at this anchor, applies a suitable dash setting for each splitted path, then put them into a group. This is a lockstep trick caused by an Illustrator path can have only one simple rule for dashes and gaps.

The visible peaks of arrows exactly locate at each visible end of the selected paths. The end of paths are trimmed in order to avoid sticking out from the head of the arrow. The old version of Ovalize. Now you can run scripts with the specified key command as before.

If you don’t have Illustrator open it will automatically launch it. This second extension will ensure syntax highlighting and that you don’t get unnecessary errors when running a. Load a new.

Similarily you could run other Adobe applications the same way. If you would like to customize the key command to be the same as Atom or different than the default, follow the remaining steps. Search for adobeScriptRunner. Add the following keybinding for Adobe Illustrator:. This guide is written with the intention of providing an entry point into learning how to write scripts for use in Adobe Illustrator CC.

It assumes some experience with programming fundamentals and JavaScript. The content is oriented towards visual design and writing code that results in visual and graphical elements. If you are familiar with creative coding IDE’s such as Processing or OpenFrameworks , it should feel familiar in the iterative “write – run There are several official Adobe documents that act as good references for learning scripting.

I suggest reading through them in the following order to grasp fundamental concepts and to learn which references are relevant to the task at hand. For older versions check. If you are interested in a more modern approach to working with the documentation and have some experience working with Node.

It’s a great alternative for building your own searchable reference documentation from the ExtendScript API. In general, you want to Setup Atom one time and make a new Illustrator document. It is possible to generate new documents using the app. We will cover more of this method later. At this point you should have an empty document in Illustrator with 1 empty layer and a project folder to store scripts in.

The most basic scripts consist of drawing paths and shapes on layers within a document. To do this there needs to be a reference to an active document and at least one layer within the document.

The code below provides a boilerplate to get a reference to the active document and the first and only layer in the document. Any code entered in a script following these references will have access to the doc or layer objects.

Preprocessor directives are a way to include external scripts. At a basic level, the first line of a script might have a directive as show below. This directive includes any code written in the file lib.

Why use this? Over time your code might get complex, making it hard to read. Using additional files will allow you to modularize, simplify, reuse, and streamline your code.

For the moment we won’t worry about preprocessor directives. We will make use of them later in the guide. This example will insert the text “Hello World” at the position 0,0 in the artboard. The position that an object is inserted into the artboard is dependent on the artboard coordinates.

When you make a new document using the Illustrator New Document window, the artboard will default to a position of 0,0. This is not always the case when generating an artboard using a script. We will explore why this is next. Create an Illustrator file with mm as the default units. Set the document size to mm x mm and RGB Color.

As mentioned previously, its really nice to be able to see the grid while learning about positioning and inserting objects to the artboard. Run the code using Process Palette to see the result in Illustrator. The text was placed in the top left corner at 0,0. I have not found a solution for printing debug messages to the console in Atom yet. To make use of it, you can have the ExtendScript Toolkit open next to Atom.

In many cases, it’s probably much easier to reference a documentation system such as Documentation for the ExtendScript API by Yearbook. This section describes the examples contained in the scripts folder. The best way to learn the API is to work through these examples starting from the top. This example assumes there is an active document open in Illustrator.

It gets a reference to the document, the first layer in the document, then adds a textFrameItem to the textFrames collection. A reference to the textFrameItem added is then positioned at 0,0 and given the contents of “Hello World”. Assuming the document was created from the new file menu, it will have an origin of the top left, meaning both the world coordinates and artboard coordinates will align.

As such, the text should be drawn in the top left corner. This example creates a new document with a width of pt and height of pt and adds a pointTextItem to the textFrames collection.

Points are the default unit in Illustrator. Before adding the text object we shift the ruler origin for the document such that the origin is in the top left. This is different from when we create a document using the standard new file menu. In two previous examples, you may notice the location of the text inserted is at or near the bottom of the artboard. This is because when generating a new document with a script, Illustrator will default to the bottom left as the origin instead of the top left.

This example makes use of the DocumentPreset function to setup a new document. This allows you to customize things like the document title, width, height, and colorspace.

It also allows you to make use of built in Illustrator presets for documents which I rarely find myself using. This example builds on the previous one and includes a scaling factor to change the document units from Points to Millimeters. I find the easiest way to deal with unit conversion is to just multiply or divide by the scaling factor.

In this case its 2. The document units are also specified in the docPreset as Millimeters.