[Stuart Gill]

Vince’s suggest is a work around that doesn’t fix the original problem.

I can see what has happened, the four paths are closed polygons not open paths. To get around this you need to use the scissors tool to cut each path somewhere in the middle. Using the direct select tool you can then move the two endpoints away from the line and delete them. This will leave you with an open path with two endpoints you can join to the other paths.

[Stuart Gill]

I see that the surfaces are made up of raster images which have been clipped instead of vector objects with gradients.

As a very simple test, I drew a green rectangle over the top of the objects. In the Transparency Palette I changed the transparency blending mode to “Colour” (100% Opacity) which gave me a nice green tint to the objects. This changes the appearance of the objects to green but doesn’t work correctly because it leaves an obvious rectangle which has to be clipped to the shapes.

I suggest you follow Les’ advice and recreate it as a complete vector object. You can use the clipping masks and colour them in as they are already vector objects which are in the correct position and have the correct sizes. That will save you having to redraw the whole thing.

[Stuart Gill]

I concur with Les, it sounds like it might be better to post the file for some of us to see what the problem could be?

[Stuart Gill]

When you delete the aiprefs file, Illustrator recreates a fresh one when it starts up. That is why Illustrator needs to be closed while you delete the file.

Can you print to a pdf through the print dialog? If it does indeed create a pdf then I suspect it is down to the printer driver. It may work if you have the printer installed first before you install Illustrator. Also, as I asked previously, can you see if the printer has a postscript driver? It may need to be done separately or be specifically chosen when installing the driver.

Hope this helps,

Stuart

[Stuart Gill]

Follow what Vincent has said in his post. Also to reiterate his question, what file/folder did you delete? Did you mean the aiprefs file or something else?

As your font listing is not working properly, it suggests to me that you may have deleted more than you should have?

If you have managed to correctly delete the aiprefs file, per my instructions, and it still doesn’t print then you should also look at your printer driver. What printer do you have? Does it have a postscript driver?

On another tack, you mentioned that you have reinstalled Illustrator. Was this after a new install of windows? With the fonts going funny, you may need to do, as a last resort, resintall Illustrator again. If you decide to do that, make sure you uninstall it and restart the machine first.

[Stuart Gill]

Does this happen with one file or with all files?

You can try deleting the aiprefs file. Close Illustrator first and go to the following location, depending on what OS you are using.

Illustrator CS2:
Windows XP and 2000
Documents and Settings/[user name]/Application Data/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS2 Settings/AIPrefs

Windows Vista
Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS2 Settings/AIPrefs

Don’t have a MAC, so not sure where to find it.

[Stuart Gill]

Slightly different way again.

After selecting the object and clicking on the rotate tool, hold the Alt key down and click where you want the rotation point to be for that object. The rotate dialog box will appear straight after and you can specify your angle and click copy. Then press Crtl-D to repeat the transformation.

[Stuart Gill]

There will be no change in size with the way I suggested and the pattern can be altered easily by only using the transform menu. You can change the width between the lines by scaling the pattern through the Object menu > Transform > Scale, and remember to untick ‘Objects’ at the bottom, while leaving ‘Patterns’ ticked.

I used the default line thickness for Illustrator which is 1pt, if you change the scale of the pattern, as above, the line thickness will scale too. If you want to adjust an existing pattern, you can drag the swatch on to the artboard from the panel, make any changes and drag it back. You can Alt drag on top of an existing swatch the replace it. I usually have two patterns, one as I created above and another with much thicker lines to give the appearance of thicker lines when I scale the pattern down to say 50% of the original.

Once you have a go and adjust the scale of the pattern, you will understand what I am getting at.

Stuart

[Stuart Gill]

With the pattern you created do you want it to look pixelated in Illustrator?

To correctly make a diagonal line pattern you can follow the instructions below. The instructions may look complicated but once you have tried it a couple of times, you should be able to create the pattern in about a minute.

Make a square, 50mm by 50mm. To the side of the square, use the line tool to draw a 50mm horizontal line. Duplicate the line four times directly below the first one, by Shift-Alt dragging the top line, should now have 5 lines total.
Select all the lines, then click on the top line (just click without doing anything else, all the lines should remain selected if done correctly), open the Align panel, go to Distribute Spacing and choose 0mm from the drop down menu and change it to 10mm then click Vertical Distribute Spacing.

You should now have five lines spaced 10mm apart. Group the lines together (Object menu > Group), then select the square and the lines, now horizontally and vertically centre align the two objects (top row of icons in the Align Panel).

Remove the stroke and fill from the square, select everything and drag to the swatches panel.

Create a new object and apply the pattern swatch, go to the Object menu > Transform > Rotate, untick Object at the bottom of the dialog box, choose an angle of rotation, click okay.

A couple of things, while creating the pattern, changing the line thickness will make the line spacing appear bigger or smaller. Use the scale tool in the same way as the rotation tool to adjust the ‘spacing’ of the lines.

The original square can have a fill to block out anything behind it or leave the fill empty to see through the pattern.

Hope this helps.

Stuart

[Stuart Gill]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post to the forum. This is my solution/work around.

I had the same problem recently with a file that wouldn’t export as a, in my case, tiff image. The way I got around it was by using multiple artboards in CS4, cutting my work into three sections and exporting those as separate images. I opened one of them in Photoshop, resized the canvas and added the other segments to it, making sure they butted together properly. It might not be the correct way but it worked for me as I ended up with a single tiff image, with the correct size and resolution.

In CS3 you can do the same thing with multiple crop areas.

Hope this helps.

Stuart