The app.activeDocument.groupItems collection contains a list of all document groups. If the script duplicates an existing group or creates a new one using the groupItems.add() method, the contents of the GroupItems collection are not updated: the number remains the same as before you ran the script, you cannot access the…

Ways to quickly run scripts in Illustrator that are not installed in the scripts folder: Menu File → Scripts → Other Script… The drag-and-drop method is to drag a script file from a folder in Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) to an Adobe Illustrator window. For future examples, let’s refresh…

A Compound Shape is an editable object consisting of two or more elements. It is created from the Pathfinder panel menu → Make Compound Shape or by applying a Boolean operation with the Alt key. A Compound Shape looks like a group, but has no similar properties and methods for…

Adobe Illustrator CC (Creative Cloud) scripts on Windows computers, have a “flickering” problem when you close the dialog box. Visually, it looks like double-clicking Alt+Tab when the previous program window appears in the foreground. In Adobe Illustrator CS6, there is no this problem in the tests. The reason for the…

In the Illustrator Preferences or current document settings (Document Setup → Units) you set the ruler units. Document units do not affect global preferences, but changing global units will change document settings. In the DOM, the activeDocument.rulerUnits property returns the current units from the list: RulerUnits.Pixels, RulerUnits.Millimeters, and so on…

In Illustrator, the document canvas was limited to 227 × 227 inches. Since version 24.2 (СС 2020), you can create a document in large canvas mode, where the working area is 100 times larger (2270 × 2270 inches). The large canvas mode in the Illustrator interface scales all sizes by…

For area type and type on a path, a path is a vector. You can do the same with textPath as with other paths: recolor, change position, and more. The point array of a text path can also be manipulated: select, move, add, and delete. While it is enough to…

The current Illustrator API doesn’t allow you to work with all the strokes and fills added to an object as with arrays. Similar to one active layer, the Illustrator API defines one active stroke and fill. We see their contents in the Color, Stroke, and other panels. You activate them manually in the Appearance panel. The active status indicator is an additional pixel frame around the color square.

The artboards.setActiveArtboardIndex(index) method makes the specified artboard active in the document and available for operations in the script. The user identifies the active artboard in Illustrator by: black pixel frame, highlighted in the Artboards panel, Artboard Tool (Shift+O) shows the artboard name in the Control panel. Running setActiveArtboardIndex has an interface bug: the active artboard gets a black border, but the highlighting and name do not change.