Multiple extra anchor points when expanding/outlining a stroke

[Piter1288]

Hi everyone,

What's going on with Illustrator that adds so many anchor points when you expand/outline a path? This is the result I used to get before and then how it behaves now. Why does it need so many ancho points for a simple circle?

It does it with all the shapes regardless of how simple they are, like 6 for a triangle now?

[m1b]

Hi @Piter1288, that's really weird! I'm not able to reproduce that though (MacOS AI v26.0.2).

Are you working with a simple appearance? For testing purposes, please press D for default appearance and choose Object > Path > Outline stroke. Does that give too many points also?

- Mark

[Piter1288]

Well, that's even worse:

[m1b]

Weird, but why is the circle red? When I press D it sets fill to White and Stroke to Black. Is your default different?

- Mark

[Piter1288]

I did change the color before creating the circle so the anchor points will highlight better, I posted a little video about what I did.

[CarlosCanto · Accepted solution]

that's weird indeed, but I did notice your shape is rather large, so digging a little I was finally able to replicate your problem

expanding a 425 pt diameter circle = 4 points

expanding a 426 pt diameter circle = a few more points

expanding larger circles = more points

[m1b]

Good detective work Carlos! I can confirm the same on my system. I wonder what the reason is. I did notice there is a 1.5pt difference in the shape of the curve when comparing a 10,000pt expanded circle with a 10pt expanded circle scaled up to 10,000pt (it keeps the normal 4 points). So very minor. Interesting.

- Mark

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

>>I wonder what the reason is. 

It did the same on my second test on a 4K video profile. I suspect it is to maintain the integrity of the shape.

[Piter1288]

And we have a winner! Yes, that reason, I checked that it does this if the circle is higher than 300 x 300 px. Here's a comparison between a 100 px vs a 500 px:

Now it surprises that the handlers cannot reach higher and it needs to add up to 30 anchor points to keep the shape.

[CarlosCanto]

Hi Mark, I did notice scaling a small circle up doesn't add more anchor points. I have no idea what's going on.

About size difference, there's another related thread. A user reported that rotating a circle changed its dimensions. The issue could be related to the "circles not being real circles but Bezier approximations" discussion.

[Piter1288]

Now, regardless of the size, if your circle is in rotation you will end up with extra points as well. These are less than 100 px circles:

[CarlosCanto]

I'm getting the same results as Mark. I'm on Windows 11.

can you describe what you're doing exactly to try to replicate it?

[Piter1288]

Here's a video of the the proceeding for both expand and outline stroke:

https://recordit.co/RADvCmaLX0 

[m1b]

I'm at a loss. Anything unusual show up in the appearance panel? Running a beta version of Illustrator? Done a restart? Sorry.

- Mark

[Piter1288]

This is my appearance panel:

I'm not on any beta version, yes, I did restart my computer, plus I don't use any type of extension that could be messing things up.

Does AI have any clear cache function? It's the only thing that I can think of. What I'm 100% sure is that it didn't happen before, cause it would've caught my attention for sure.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

What keyboard command are you doing to display the anchor points? I don't see you switching tools and want to confirm your method.

[Piter1288]

Hi David! I use Windows, so just hit on the Ctrl key to display them.

[CarlosCanto]

What keyboard command are you doing to display the anchor points? I don't see you switching tools and want to confirm your method.

By @Dave Creamer of IDEAS

David, maybe this setting is on