Comments on: Illustrator 101: To Scale or Not to Scale? Strokes, That Is.

By: Tim G

Tim G — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:49:09 +0000

Here’s a gotcha: If you’re importing an .ai document into your doc, if the original doc didn’t have these prefs, be sure to embed prior to scaling. Your new doc will not override the existing prefs. (Just discovered this the hard way.)

By: BB

BB — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:46:24 +0000

Thanks, I am a graphic design student and its funny all the things teachers don’t teach you! I was about to get a major headache until I read this tip.

By: airlie

airlie — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:31:18 +0000

thank you thank you! exactly the answer I needed.

By: Ramsi

Ramsi — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:59:09 +0000

OMG the answer! so simple! thx

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:08:07 +0000

A related question:
Is it possible to scale the stroke weight without scaling the object? I have a drawing with a lot of different stroke weights. Now I want to make all strokes a bit thinner (say 80%) without scaling the object. Does anybody know how this would be done?

By: Gunnar @ Trigger Vision Media

Gunnar @ Trigger Vision Media — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:39:43 +0000

This was super helpful. Thank you so much! I would have never figured this out by myself…

By: Ben S

Ben S — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:37:44 +0000

Aaaah this has been bugging me since I started using Illustrator years ago. Thanks very much for sharing this useful info with us all! Life saver :D

And yes… it’s taken me this long to getting round to putting ’scale object and stroke in illustrator’ into Google…

By: Bigger and Louder Farts

Bigger and Louder Farts — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:33:21 +0000

I wonder if I could get a bounding box on my a$$?

By: Laura G

Laura G — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:19:31 +0000

I had been looking for this,
all this week, thank u very much
u saved my life :D

By: Holly D

Holly D — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:37:39 +0000

Horray! I’ve been changing mananually and finally figured it was time to figure out how to do this in AI – I’m more familiar with Corel but have tried to wean off it to AI but go back to Corel when I can’t figure something out. Thanks for the great tip!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:35:41 +0000

This is a great tip, but it didn’t work for scaling down a brushstroke. What am I doing wrong? Also, I am working with a logotype, and as I scale the illustration with the brushstroke larger, eventually this distorts the position of the type. Any suggestions?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:20:52 +0000

Thanks for this – I’ve been tearing my hear out wondering why strokes didn’t scale!

By: Lorraine

Lorraine — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:08:14 +0000

Thank you very much.

By: Rena Hicks

Rena Hicks — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:58:01 +0000

hership dogmatically maladive towards withstand hoistway uplook domestically
Pine Valley RV Park and Campground
http://www.thebigpicturedvd.com/cgi-bin/master/viewer.cgi/The_Iron_Giant

By: PETER JONSON

PETER JONSON — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:26:24 +0000

CAN YOU SEND THIS TO MY BOSS????

By: CARLY

CARLY — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 03:32:52 +0000

Wow thanks for the great tips!

By: James Grifin

James Grifin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:44:59 +0000

Your tutorials are excellent for Illustrator users if your a beginner or not. Your teaching methods are very precise, clear and un-patronising.

Thanks

By: Andres

Andres — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:55:21 +0000

Thanks a loooooooooooot!!!
You’ve save my life…and my time.

By: hexefish

hexefish — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:15:05 +0000

Thanks for this tip!

By: kskdsn

kskdsn — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:29:27 +0000

Still possible, but a little more advanced. You need to use the “Brush” tab (open it from menus Window>Brushes).

Now, draw a little circle (maybe 1/4″), with the fill & stroke characteristics you want. In the Brush tab, open the little click-down arrow at top right of the tab and choose “new brush”. it will ask you what type, so choose “Scatter” and name it if you want. For now, leave all the settings at the default and choose ok.

Next, draw an empty rectangle, circle or pen shape on the artboard, and click on your new brush icon in the tab. This should stroke your line with the brush you just created. If it’s not quite the effect you want, double click your custom brush icon and tweak the size/spacing percentages (you probably want to keep them set to “fixed”) until you get what you want.
Then, just expand the stroke.

With custom brush strokes, you can get lines made of not just circles, but anything you can draw in Illustrator. I did a project in which I quickly created a swirl of colored flowers, by making a custom flower brush and adjusting the settings to vary the size, scatter and color.
Have fun.
KSKDSN