Adding a Stroke to a path distorts it.

[Vincent Rosati]

Hard to say. Almost sounds like you’re using a brush or drawing with an appearance.

Try selecting the object then press ‘D’, or click the Default Fill and Stroke button in the tool palette, the two big overlapped squares at the bottom.

Vince

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[Daniël Louw]

Can you please explain what you mean by drawing with an appearance?

I tried the default stroke as per your suggestion – same problem.

See attached for the file I’m working on. It’s a bunch of unstroked and unfilled paths. When I select a path, and add a stroke with the Control panel, it distorts.

Note the paths in my file are unclosed for a reason. They are motion paths for After Effects 🙂

2980_logostroke.ai.zip

[Vincent Rosati]

I’m afraid I can’t see anything in the file, as I’m in CS4, the artboard is empty. I think that any artwork needs to be inside the artboard for older versions to see the art.
If it is in the artboard, try saving down to CS2 or something.

Regarding the Appearance. Open the Appearance palette, Window/Appearance. Now when you select an object you can see any effects that might be applied to the object.
However based on your last post I’d say that probably wouldn’t matter, since you’re using them for paths in AE. Though, I can’t be totally sure about that.

Vince

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[Daniël Louw]

Your mention about the artboards put me on a hunch. I am using CS5, but all the artworks are on the artboard. So I saved it down to CS2 as you suggested. It fixed the problem. Saving it back up to CS5 made no difference and I can now add strokes without breaking anything.

I still do not know what caused the problem. I might raise the problem with Adobe themselves one day, but it’s not that serious.

Thanks!