Order of FX in object appearance and transformed object's position

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
April 26, 2026
2 replies
30 views

We had talked about this before. I am puzzled by the behaviour of Illustrator.

Say I have a 1in line with a 1pt stroke at 90deg. I apply Transform FX in which I change three entries: rotate set to 10 deg, copies set to 30, and reference point set to middle bottom. First, I place the Transform FX below Stroke and Fill for the line. Then I move Transform FX above Stroke and Fill. I notice a position change in the result on the artboard. Why?

This is for CS4 but I guess it applies to any edition.

PS: Not that I expect Monika to chime in, but I do! 😉

Monika Gause

Community Expert

If you apply the transform effect before the stroke, then the stroke options are ignored (of course, because you are transforming the naked path). WHen you transform it after applying a stroke, then the strokes are respected.

S

sPretzelAuthor

Inspiring

So how come the stroke weight is not ignored?

S

sPretzelAuthor

Inspiring

And either way, the stroke weight or cap do not affect the bounding box of the stroke. It is the bounding box that is used as a reference for Transform FX.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

A screenshot would be nice. Or even a film with the Appearance panel in it. There was a substantial change in what you could do in the Appearance panel around version CS3 or 4.

S

sPretzelAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Monika,

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I have attached two screenshots: 1- showing Appearance of left line, 2- showing Appearance of right line. Only the position of the Transform FX in the stack changes. I expect the two transformed lines to be identical and look like the one on the right.

While I was preparing the files, I noticed that it is the stroke cap that is the culprit. Here, it is set to Projecting Cap (same if Round Cap) but if I set it to Butt Cap, the issue is gone and the left and right lines look the same, when transformed. Still, I don’t understand why AI behaves this way since the bounding box of the lines are the same, regardless of stroke cap. And the bounding box does not account for the butt cap.

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