Keeping Stroke Weight on a line when applying a Brush

[kylwell]

Say I have a slew of paths of an assortment of weights. I select them all and from the Brush pallet apply a brush to them all by clicking on the Brush I want to use. The stroke weight changes on all of them to 1pt. Is there ANY way to apply a brush to a stroke and not have it default to 1?

[S_Gans]

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is "not as a group". In Illustrator (I assume you're referring to calligraphic brushes), brushes have a size, so they won't conform to the stroke width you've already applied to a path. You CAN, however, create multiple brushes at the sizes you want. In the brushes panel, you can duplicate a brush by selecting it and using the brush panel drop down menu to duplicate it, or drag it to the new brush icon. Then, to resize it, double-click it and you'll have a bunch of settings come up, at which point you can change the brush size.

Unfortunately, you'd have to select individual paths, or multiples (using shift) and apply each brush to those selected paths to emulate the sizes you want.

If you don't already have the paths made, you can also use each brush with the paintbrush tool to make the paths, using each brush preset as you make them.

[Cactus Cowboy]

Go to the appearance pallet and in the right upper corner click the dropdown menu and make sure the "new art has basic appearance" is un-checked. Maybe that will work.

[kylwell]

Simple Art Brush applied to a grouped or ungrouped bunch or paths. "New Art Has Basic Appearance" makes no difference.

The reason for this is I was using a stroke profile that when converted to outline has a billion points. Quick fix is to build an Art Brush, apply it, convert to outlines, viola less points.

Trying to figure out how to explain this in pictures... maybe an interpretative dance number...

[S_Gans]

Aah, an Art Brush! It's beginning to make sense to me now. I do have one question though - why make the Art Brush at all? If you've saved the profile, why not draw paths and apply the profile to them AS a profile? In fact, you may have better control over stroke widths if you do it that way, since an art brush has a more cumbersome method of changing the width, and a profile can have stroke width applied directly.

Unfortunately, applying the profile will change the perception of your original stroke widths. So, you'd still need to change stroke width individually, per path (or multiple paths), but you'd only have as many points as you draw, with your profile applied.

But, if you do have a reason for converting them to outline and then art brush instead of above, I'd be interested in knowing that. Perhaps with that info, I can make another suggestion. But otherwise, I WILL need that interpretive dance routine AND perhaps a good mime routine...

[kylwell]

I actually studied mime @ one time... hold on, I'll need to find a leotard...

Typically in my experience Illustrator's standard stroke profiles create far more points when converted to an outline than a art brush.Hold on let me see if I can get an example.... and of course the tests I just did say default profiles produce less points than and art brush of a similar shaping.

Ok, by the numbers - 1,944 open paths comprised of 8,856 points. If I assign a stroke profile then expand I get 101,412 points. If I assign an Art Brush of similar shape and expand I get 74,991 points.

My reasons for expanding the stroke are rooted in 15 years of pre-press when too many points would crash the RIP. It's the reason I learned to hate Freehand. Now I can, of course, use the Simplify menu item to reduce point numbers but that can also go way wonkers @ times. Yes, technically I had less points before I outlined but the RIP does that same task so I'd typically expand and cut instead of relying on Clipping Masks to coverup the excess. I know, I'm weird and bassakwards but there you go. Hell the first RIP I worked with would puke on anything that had more than 50,000 points. Gads I hated that beast.

[S_Gans]

Let me see if I can type this in mime...          

Okay- that didn't get across so well on the 'net, so maybe I'll type in words..

So, what you're saying is that the RIP is processing the shape of the path that has the profile applied as points describing the whole shape (as if it's expanded)? I haven't worked with a RIP in some time, so didn't realize that was happening. I do know they choke on too many points (that's why I've always taught my Illustrator students to use an economy of points). But I never realized it was reading each points of the visible profile... Then, what you're doing makes sense... AND, I can see why an art brush would generate fewer points per stroke...

BUT, one of the problems I've always had with the art brush as well, is it's inability to read pre-assigned stroke weights. Always a shocker when a fatter art brush gets all gloppy on a tight path. Sorry I have no ideas right now (except for that whole "adjusting it individually" thing. I'm going to give this some more thought.

BTW - as I've typed this, that Laurel and Hardy gif has now embedded itself on my retinas! LOL!