Illustrator Scripting: changing stroke or fill of groupItems (not content of a group)

[Nils M. Barner]

In Illustrator Stroke and Fill can be applied to a Group itself in the Appearance Panel.

They then will visualy overright the Strokes of all objects inside this group.

I wonder if it is possible to check / change the strokeWidth of such a group by script as the scripting reference seams not have any specific attributes for this case.

check attached file (rename as .ai) to play around...

Anyone any idea / solution in mind?

Thanks

Nils

[Nils M. Barner]

Please post only Scripting solutions!

[CarlosCanto · Accepted solution]

select your group before running

activeDocument.defaultStrokeWidth = 6

[CarlosCanto]

wait, maybe I misunderstood, your sample file doesn't give any clues as what you need, please provide before and after if I did.

[Nils M. Barner]

Hi CarlosCanto,

selecting the groups worked out well so far (see script below)

Big question now is:

Is it possible to check the strokeWidth of such a group before changing (getting the value before setting a new one)?

example file setting are the following:

- the sample file includes 2 similar groups, each containing 2 rectangles

- all rectangles do not have any stroke

- but a 3pt stroke was added for the whole group (both groups)

Here's my Script so far:

var docRef = app.activeDocument;
var pIs = docRef.pageItems;

for (var p=0; p<pIs.length; p++) {
    docRef.selection = null;

    if (pIs[p].constructor.name == "GroupItem") {
        pIs[p].selected = true;
        activeDocument.defaultStrokeWidth = 6;
    }
}

[CarlosCanto · Accepted solution]

Hi Nils, yes! select your group and check the default stroke

var strokeSize = activeDocument.defaultStrokeWidth;

[Nils M. Barner · Accepted solution]

damn! this one was too easy! 😂

but it makes perfect sense (i will never get used to these default stroke functions.... and i still don't understand why they don't just give us a direct control function for group properties 🤷🏼‍:male_sign:)...

thank you soo much for helping me out!

So here's my final Script:

var docRef = app.activeDocument;
var minStrokeWidth = 4;


for (var p=0; p<docRef.pageItems.length; p++) {
    docRef.selection = null;
    var myPI = docRef.pageItems[p];

    if (myPI.constructor.name == "GroupItem") {
        myPI.selected = true;
        var myStrokeWidth = activeDocument.defaultStrokeWidth;
        if (myStrokeWidth < minStrokeWidth) {
            activeDocument.defaultStrokeWidth = minStrokeWidth;
        }
        docRef.selection = null;
    }
}

[CarlosCanto]

or make a copy, select the copy and Expand Appearance, one of the paths should have the stroke size you need