OVERLAPPING OBJECTS

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 7, 2024
2 replies
3154 views

Hi, team. I'm working with illustrator and I have a scene with many objects placed randomly. Some of these objects are overlapping. Is there a script or feature that can automatically adjust their positions to avoid overlaps and ensure a more even distribution?

Scripting

m1b

Community Expert

Hi @Hanschrs, this discussion inspired me to write a script that might help (but don't worry if it doesn't suit your case—I was happy to write it anyway as I've wanted to do something like this for a long time!)

The script is called "Distribute Items.js" and you can download it from my github repo for general scripts (it's a new repo, I just made today but I will be adding new scripts to it all the time).

If you try it out, try it on not-too-many page items to start with while you are experimenting with the parameters. If you like you can adjust the default parameters by editing the "settings" object in the script (it is near the start).

Let me know if it is useful.

- Mark

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Thanks for this contribution, Mark.

I did some tests and can say that the script works pretty well as far as I do understand its parameters.

You already indicated that it's rather a good idea to not execute it with too many selected objects. As per my testing I'd say that one should definitely not select more than about 300 objects at the same time. Otherwise Illustrator gets severely frozen, at least on the machine I use at the moment.

Perhaps you should implement a warning message in case the users select too many crumbs.

m1b

Community Expert

Hi @Kurt Gold just letting you know that I have updated the code on github. I have included text warnings, and alert warnings (for more extreme cases) and also added a progress bar, so you can at least know that things are working!

I would love to know how to improve performance further, but so far I don't have many ideas. I think now you can work on more than 300 items okay. Of course, if there are too many operations, you might want to stretch your legs and get a cup of coffee!

Thanks again, for taking the time to check out my script.

- Mark

CarlosCanto

Community Expert

I haven't seen a script for that, can you post screnshots showing more details of what you need? or better yet can you share sample files?

H

HanschrsAuthor

Known Participant

When I use brushes in Illustrator to create a stippling effect, I end up with too many overlapping points and have to manually move them to achieve a more uniform shape. That image has been hand-edited to create a more balanced effect.