custom trim marks

[lanny47]

Happy Holidays everybody.

OK I need to create custom trim or crop marks where the lines meet to form a 90º angle. These also need to align with the path NOT the stroke so I can export the doc to a digital cutter. The stroke would function as a bleed so if the cutter was slightly off, it wouldn’t matter.

Any ideas?

[Monika Gause]

Can you please show a screenshot or a sketch?

It sounds like a simple task, so there must be something that keeps you from just drawing two lines.

[lanny47]

Thanks Monika, Yep you are right ”simple task” but I do tis many times a day. I can draw the right angle, create guidelines and make sure they align with each side perfectly,. Then move the angles to each intersection and align precisely, rotate where necessary, etc. I’ve been doing this for years since the cutting software had to be aligned on each corner manually but the latest version has a laser which will find them automatically.

Since Illustrator  can make trims and bleeds, makes more sense to find a way it can do the alignment and right angles for me.

[Monika Gause]

Can you please show something?

[lanny47]

Morning, OK Briefly, I design and make decals for vintage trailers and campers from the late 30s to early 80s. Some are simple, most are relatively complex. Most are cut from either solid or printed vinyl. The drawings are done either solely in AI or in a combination of AI and Photoshop, as the one shown. This particular decal is 24” wide.

The vector path used to cut the image boarder is stroked to create a bleed which will be trimmed off.

Angle trim marks that meet to form a right angle are needed so the cutter’s laser can establish the outside edges of the vector drawing.

These are now being done by hand. They have to be exact in order for the cutter to still be acceptably. A small decal 12” or less is not critical but in larger decals as this one, if it’s off even slightly, the cutter may be off as much as a 1’16” of an inch toward the final cut. Doings these by hand is not a complex scenario, just time consuming when you are doing a volume of images.

My question is, can Illustrator do this kind of trim mark automatically for me ?

Thanks

Lanny

[Monika Gause]

What you can do, is make a copy of the complete artwork, delete all the strokes, so that there are only fills and then use the Object > Make Crop marks command that Bill already mentioned.

Afterwards delete the copy of your artwork so only the crop marks are left.

You might want to do all this on a new layer and lock the other layer.

Maybe it's possible to make an action out of this (would depend on the way your file is organized and if all of them are organized in the same way).

But maybe grouping stuff is enough to be able to delete it quickly.

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

Maybe this script will do what you want, it can use geometric bounds instead of the visible bounds of the object.

MakeCropMarksAI.jsx - DTP Scripting

[lanny47]

Thanks everyone, I worked with the script for trim marks and got exactly what I needed.Happy New Year!

[Ton Frederiks]

Good to hear that. But the credit goes to Sergey Anosov who wrote the script.

[aubreyb21029007]

Where do you put this Script in the "Scripting" Folders? Under AppleScript or Java Script ? Does it matter ?

[Ton Frederiks]

You don't put it in the Scripting folder but in:

/Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2019/Presets/en_GB/Scripts

Where /en_GB/ is your language folder

[Bill Silbert]

If you are printing the job you could make your artboard the exact dimension of your object and align the path exactly to the artboard. You would also have to set the bleed in the Document Setup (under the File Menu) to exactly the width of the object's stroke. In the Print Dialog window in the Marks and Bleed Section you would choose trim marks and set an offset of zero so that your crops will intersect. Also you should click on "use Document Bleed Settings" under Bleed.

If you are not printing the object and just want to generate crop marks around it you can select the object and use the "Create Trim Marks" option under the Object Menu. These crops do not intersect and are aligned to the stroke but can be selected using the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow) and moved through the Transform Panel or through the Move Dialog Window (accessed by double-clicking on the white arrow while one of the crops are selected) where you can enter the exact amount you need the crop to move to do what you need.

[lanny47]

Thanks bill, I'll give this a run through and let you know.