Skip to main content
Disposition_Dev
Disposition_Dev
Legend
January 5, 2015
Answered

Javascript to make selection of top level group?

  • January 5, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 2092 views

Does anyone know of a way to select a top level group by index?

For example, i have many files with deeply nested groups and i want to select all artwork in only the top level groups and create an artboard around the visible bounds of said group.

I've been able to loop through the groupItems of the document, but i cannot seem to differentiate between top level groups and sub groups. In other words, the loop is working properly, but it is creating an artboard around the top level group, then around each subgroup and each group within that subgroup.

In the attached image, you can see that there are 5 top level groups in this document. However, basically everything else is grouped within those groups. for example, the "YouWho" logo is approximately 100+ path items grouped together. the information on the collar is grouped several times in a complex hierarchy as well.

The obvious solution is to ungroup everything and then regroup each shirt piece as 1 group. unfortunately, that in itself is more time consuming than manually creating the artboards and then the file is not very clean if we ever need to get back inside it to change/fix something.

i'm imagining some way to loop through the subgroups and ignore them if they are within the geometric bounds of the top level?? But i'm not really sure where to start on that code..

This is the code i have currently that is creating artboards around each groupItem, but also around each groupItem within the top level... it also throws an error because i think illustrator can't keep up with creating the artboards that fast? when i run the same script on less complicated artwork it works fine.

var docRef = app.activeDocument;


var aB = docRef.artboards;


var gI = docRef.groupItems;






for (a = 0; a< gI.length; a++){


    var currentGroup = gI;


    currentGroup.selected = true;


    var vB = currentGroup.visibleBounds;


    aB.add(vB);//an Illustrator error occurred: 1346458189 ('MRAP')


}  

any ideas how to isolate that top level group and ignore the rest?? Thanks folks.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Silly-V

Instead of document.groupItems, try document.layers[0].groupItems

1 reply

Silly-V
Silly-VCorrect answer
Legend
January 5, 2015

Instead of document.groupItems, try document.layers[0].groupItems

    Disposition_Dev
    Disposition_DevAuthor
    Legend
    January 5, 2015

    Brilliant. that works perfectly!

    Unfortunately, however.. i don't know WHY that works.. because it seems to me that it's doing the same thing (since there's only one layer anyhow..)

    could you tell me why referring to that layer by index doesn't also include the subgroups within each of those top level groups??

    Silly-V
    Silly-V
    Legend
    January 5, 2015

    Oh yea, the reason behind this is easily understood when you get the following clarification: document.groupItems  refers to all the group items in the document, regardless of layer, or parent group(s).  For an example, if you have a set of groups nested inside a top-level group in layer 1, the document.groupItems.length will refer to all of them, but looking at the groupItems of that first layer will only show you the top-level group in the layer.

    It also works the same way for groupItem.groupItems

    You can now see that when it comes to pageItems, pathItems or other items, looking at the document or looking at the partition of the document takes you between two extremes: you either get all of it, or just one of it.  Methods of dealing with this may vary completely, depending on the kind of file structure is in place and what work needs to be done.

      Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
      Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices