Group Shapes by Row

[BryanPagenkopf]

Hello,

Help with Script that will Group the shapes by row.  If you look at the sample file I'm hoping to get a script that will take what is there and result in 4 groups.

Thank you!

[femkeblanco]

This was done on the hoof.  It requires the number of rows to be entered. 

var items = app.activeDocument.pageItems;
var array = [];
for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
    if (items[i].parent.parent == app.activeDocument && 
        items[i].typename != "TextFrame") {
            array.push(items[i]);
    }
}
array.sort(function(a, b) {
    return a.left == b.left ? a.top - b.top : a.left - b.left;
});
var n = prompt("Number of rows:");
for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    var group = app.activeDocument.groupItems.add();
    array[i].moveToEnd(group);
    for (var j = array.length - 1; j > -1; j--) {
        if (array[j] != array[i]) {
            var b1 = array[i].geometricBounds;
            var b2 = array[j].geometricBounds;
            if (b2[1] >= b1[1] && b2[3] < b1[1] || 
                b2[1] <= b1[1] && b2[1] > b1[3]) {
                    array[j].moveToEnd(group);
            }
        }
    }
}

[BryanPagenkopf]

I'm not sure if I am doing something wrong with your script but I cannot get it to work.  I enter the number of lines but nothing gets grouped.

[Kurt Gold]

Bryan, I tried Femkes approach with a bunch of plain path objects, similar to what you showed in your initial post. The script worked fine.

You may want to provide another sample Illustrator file, so she can take a look and perhaps see what is the reason why it didn't work for you.

[BryanPagenkopf]

Here is a better example

[femkeblanco]

I can't explain why the script would fail silently.  Unfortunately, I can't open your file because I use an old version of AI.  

(1) Do you get an error message?

(2) Is at least one new group item added to your layers panel? 

(3) You could try adding alert(array.length) before the prompt(); if the alert reads 0, then the problem is in the first half of the script. 

[jduncan]

Here's another approach... To get the grouping right, I instead sorted the shapes from tallest to shortest, then checked each shape again all others in each group to see if they overlapped at all. If they do, I put them in that group. This may break on some edge cases but works for this particular file. I sent this to @BryanPagenkopf to check some other files so we'll see if it really works. Cheers ✌️

var doc = app.activeDocument;
groups = groupObjectsByLine(doc.selection);
if (groups) {
  alert("Groups Created:\n" + groups.length);
}

function groupObjectsByLine(sel) {
  var groups = [];
  // sort the selected page items by their height (tallest to shortest)
  sel.sort(function (a, b) {
    var aHeight = a.geometricBounds[3] - a.geometricBounds[1];
    var bHeight = b.geometricBounds[3] - b.geometricBounds[1];
    return bHeight - aHeight;
  });
  // check if each page item shares bounds with others
  var item, placed;
  while (sel.length > 0) {
    item = sel.pop();
    placed = false;
    for (var i = 0; i < groups.length; i++) {
      group = groups[i];
      if (overlappingBounds(item, group)) {
        item.move(group, ElementPlacement.PLACEATEND);
        placed = true;
      }
    }
    // if an item didn't fit into any current groups make a new group
    if (!placed) {
      g = doc.groupItems.add();
      groups.push(g);
      item.move(g, ElementPlacement.PLACEATEND);
    }
  }
  return groups;
}

function overlappingBounds(item, group) {
  var top = item.geometricBounds[1];
  var bottom = item.geometricBounds[3];
  var gTop = group.geometricBounds[1];
  var gBottom = group.geometricBounds[3];
  if (bottom > gTop || top < gBottom) {
    return false;
  }
  return true;
}

[Kurt Gold]

Femke, I saved Bryan's second sample as an Illustrator CS5 file, so you can download and open it in your Illustrator version.

Download Bryan's Line Grouping Example (CS5 format)

Meanwhile I tried jduncan's approach and as far as I can see it works fine.

[femkeblanco]

Thanks @Kurt Gold.  I tried the file you attached, and the script worked as expected. 

[jduncan]

@femkeblanco, your script does work. Bryan sent me a version of the script in a direct message and linked to this post so I just assumed they were the same but that was not the case. The script you pasted above does work as advertised. I just wanted to set the record straight. Cheers!

[femkeblanco]

Thanks @jduncan.