Now imagine you have your shape and it's got the cross-hatch pattern running all through it. Here are the initial steps: do the pattern thing and use very thin rectangles because first we'll still use the fills to get the shape down. However, I was able to mess with it and leverage another effect to finally get it done. It's not as easy as I initially suggested because I realized you are interested in strokes - all my advice was hinged on using simple fills. A graphic style could be created to add a relatively-sized shape behind your artwork as well. You could also use pre-recorded graphic styles in a similar way, among which are live pathfinder effects too. Then you can also automate the reverse by pasting in a pre-recorded shape for a background (actions flyout menu "Insert select shape") and coloring that shape, adding some note, maybe adding some other note to your stamp-out shape and finally stamping it out using Pathfinder. All in all you can action-automate coloring a shape with this pattern by bringing it in if it's not there and trimming it to just the visible vector-lines using Pathfinder.
This would rely on you having such a pattern inside the document, but you can automate this as well by opening a file with your pattern(s) and copying a temporary shape which contains the pattern into your active document or you can simply add the pattern to your New Document Profile that you use. You can automate this process without scripts by using actions. If you want to reverse-out the shape you would first make your background square and fill it with the same pattern, then use Pathfinder operations to stamp out your negative shape. When you are ready to plot, expand the shape by using Pathfinder's various buttons. You can esablish a pattern made of your cross-hatch lines and use it to fill a shape. If I could automate this task it would save hours or even days of alt-clicking per drawing!
I can't simply "mask" the image by layering filled shapes on top, because these are vector files for pen plotter, and all vectors will be plotted whether or not they are obscured.ĭoes anyone know a solution? Would it be possible to write a script which could perform these behaviors? Please let me know if any further clarification or elaboration is needed. I need to actually sever the paths at the desired locations (where they intersect the shape's outline) and delete the unwanted parts of the path (either inside or outside the shape, depending on the context.). The Divide command can erase lines outside of a shape, but only if the shape is simple, without "undercuts." It does not seem to be able to erase lines inside of a shape. Unfortunately the Pathfinder tool does not do quite what I want. I am looking for a way to automate this process.
I expand the blend, then I place a shape on top to delineate the area I want to cut, and I use the Shape Builder tool to delete the unnecessary parts of each hatch-line individually, using the alt-click. I am looking for a way to automate one of the most needlessly laborious parts of this process.Īt present, to fill an area with parallel lines (I will refer to them as hatch-lines,) I first create the hatch-lines using the blend tool. I am using Illustrator to create complex pen-plotter drawings that typically involve a lot of cross-hatched shading.