So, out of curiosity

[Scott]

Are there any features or improvements you'd like to see in Illustrator?

It's possible that I may be in a position at some time to pass them along directly to the development team.

[PDG]

PLEASE ** PLEASE ** PLEASE!!!! MAKE THE HANDLE GRIPS LARGER! PLEASE!!!! I'm surprised they haven't done this already to help accomodate the people with poor vision or poor dexterity. Hell, freehand does it.

Sorry 'bout the caps :D

Edit: Oh, the ability to instantly delete a segment between 2 points. i.e. see the red line below? Clicking it would delete it without deleting the whole bloody circle. CorelDraw does this and it's juicy. Allows you to draw stuff *fast*

[blix]

Let's change it to a raster program.

(sorry Jolt! When I think of something serious I'll let you know!)

-B

[burndog]

years ago illustrator used to let you make multiple copies of an object along a path, if it is in ver.10 I can not find it. I thought it was useful.

I do not know illustrator well at all, so this may be possible, but it would be nice to be able to scale by handle dragging, rather than by percentage. Is there a way to do this?

[MindBender]

I'll preface this by saying I'm using Illustrator 10 so I don't know if CS fixes any of these.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. "rubber band" toggle.

I've been needing to do a coule things a lot lately and been irritated by not having a function for them:

1. Rotate MULTIPLE copies of an object around a point. e.g. make a rotational object like a flower from a single petal. Seems like the kind of thing that could be built into the transform or blend tools to me.

2. Explode objects out from a center point radially. I'd like to be able to make an object or take a collection of objects and move them from a center point out radially in even amounts. So far all the manual workarounds I've tried are a bit kluugy and produce slow unreliable results.

How about giving us a grabbable center point for regular polygons?

Perspective grids as an option on the grid tool? C'mon... if freehand can do it...

I'd like to be able to easily join the end of an open path to the center of another path. e.g. make a path then drag the anchor of the open path to a place on the original path that didn't have any anchors and merge it to the shape to either create a new shape or bisect the original. Similar to PDG's suggestion but in reverse. Look at PDG's picture but think like ADDING the red line where it wasn't already.

Take a cue from 3D programs, make a toggle that allows us to view paths with different anchors for the start and end of the path, as well as different colors for it. I've used some 3D apps where you have the start yellow and the end red and it gradiates back along the bezier so you can follow where the path is going and tell which side is the start and end. Minor but interesting feature.

I'd like to be able to drag tangent direction handles out of a point without it converting the point. e.g. if you have a nice curve but it doesn't have angle handles you have to convert it to a corner as you drag the handles out of the point just to make a minor adjustment (often losing the curve in the process). There needs to be another cursor or mode that would allow us to force an anchor wihout direction handles to let us grab them from the EXISTING curvature of the path. Different anchor icons for corners and curve points wouldn't be bad either.

Numerically placed guides from a "new guide" menu option? I've never understood why there are some vector tools in Photoshop that AREN'T in Illustrator. Being able to create guides and a numerically described spot from a single command seems like a no brainer for a vector program to me.

Ability to slide an anchor point along a path without changing the path shape. You can do this when you work with gradient mesh's by holding down the shift key and moving it (think like a bead on a stiff curved wire... point moves but wire doesn't bend). Why not have this ability with other paths?

Okay I've ranted enough for now. hehe. I'll return the soapbox when I get my deposit back.

Burndog - couple easy ways to do that. First, use the "free transform" tool. Works just like transforming in Photoshop. Second, you can give all objects a permanent transform box when clicked by turning on "bounding boxes". You won't be able to use smart guides to lock anchors and points when you use bounding boxes though so I prefer just to switch to the free transform tool when I need to visually transform an object (it's hotkey is "e").

The only way that I can think to put multiple objects along a path would be:
1. make a brush
2. make symbols and have them follow a path
3. make one object then another and make a blend of them.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, hope it helps.

[Scott]

Some great ideas there Mindbender.

1) If you rotate an object with option/alt held down, you'll end up with a copy. Then simply choose transform again from the object menu and you can repeat the rotate/copy as many times as you need. Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you need though.

All the rest aren't present in AICS.. and they are really good ideas. I have to ask though.. what benefit is there in moving a node along a path without altering the path? The <em>purpose</em> of a node is to alter the path. I could see this as beneficial in meshes but not for standard paths.


PDG, the direct selection tool will allow you to delete just a path between two nodes.

[PDG]

[QUOTE=Jolt]
PDG, the direct selection tool will allow you to delete just a path between two nodes.[/QUOTE]

How do you do this? When I click on the Direct Selection tool and click on a path, it selects the entire object (in this case the circle I drew above) and deletes it. Illustrator doesn't realize that the 2 circles are in fact intersecting. Do I need to create a compound path or a clipping mask first? Check it out at Corel...3rd one on left. (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel2/Products/Content&pid=1047023490143&cid=1047023489445)

Take for example this post (http://www.pixeladdiction.com/bb/showthread.php?t=41?do=markread), in CorelDraw, all you gotta do is click on one tool, click the path/segment you don't want (in that post it would be the ring passing behind the 'planet') and -whoosh- its gone. In Illustrator, creating that planet was a pain in the buttinski. This kills an Illustrator's time.

[PDG]

One more thing, in Freehand, I can scribble an object and Freehand will actually calculate and make it into one shape instead of one long winding and crazy-looking path. I think that would be an excellent feature within Illustrator. It'll keep me from booting Freehand just to sketch.

[Raphael]

PDG, Illustrator won't recognise points where two objects intersect, no, but the direct selection tool will let you select a path segment on one path in order to delete it, just make sure you click on the path not the point.

If you select both paths and hit 'Divide' on the 'Pathfinders' palette Illustrator will split the paths into separate pieces from the intersection points.

Jolt, I'm definitely with PDG on the handles. Scalable ones would be good to cope with high screen resolutions.

I'd like to see the sideways docking palette tabs from InDesign in there (and PS) too.

I'll get thinking about more.

[MindBender]

Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you need though.

I'm looking to have an automated feature that does this around an arbitrary point and with the number of iterations and spacing I chose. I know I can do that manually... but if you were making a rotational object that had, say, a hundred parts in it... that would get mighty tedious. Plus... I would like it to work like a blend. Treat it as one editable object rather than a million separate objects (at least until I specify to break it apart).

Think of it as a rotational version of a blend and you'll see what I'm looking for. Kind of like a lathe object in 3D.

Most often the time I wish I could move an anchor is when I have an existing path I want to edit but it's highly complex or has a predefined curve I want to keep. What I'd like to do, for example, is make a path... then use the add point tool to arbitrarily place an anchor somewhere along the path... then have a control toggle so that I can slide the point into position and edit from there. See how nicely that functionality would go with being able to draw direction handles out of an anchor point without first converting to a corner or arbitrarily bending the path?

Hopefully that makes sense... I haven't made another pot of coffee yet... heh