custom trim marks

Question

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?

Ton Frederiks · Accepted Answer

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

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

Bill Silbert · Answer

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.

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