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bretwoodh77667362
bretwoodh77667362
Participating Frequently
January 27, 2020
Answered

Stroke will not appear on object

  • January 27, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 34239 views

I'm runinng Ilustrator CC 23.0.1, and my workflow involves bringing very large vector objects into Illustrator via an SVG from QGIS 2.18.24. Every once in a while, the object I bring in will not appear to have a stroke, but Illustrator will claim it does have one. No matter what I do to manipulate the stroke, including removing and re-adding, changing width, etc., has no effect. It remains without a stroke in appearance. I've ungrouped the path, simplified it, expanded it (when set to no stroke), and made sure it wasn't a compound path. I've restarted Illustrator. None of these things have an effect. However, if I expand it when I have a stroke width set, it will expand properly, showing the outline of the non-existant stroke.

 

There is one intriguing little exception - when there is an extremely sharp corner in the path, a bit of stroke will appear. Strangely the shape of this fragment of corner is not affected by changing the corner, end, or stroke alignment, though it seems like there should be some effect.

 

[EDIT: Apparently the strange bit that did have an outline was an isolated separate bit of stroke, not just a sharp corner.]

 

This has happened before, but I'm against a wall in this case - I don't have a good workflow option to get around it.

 

I'm assuming there is some property in the SVG that is interpreted strangely by Illustrator, and is leading to this bug.  I was wondering if it had something to do with the direction of the stroke, so I reversed that, but no effect there either.

 

I attached a screenshot showing relevant settings in a very zoomed-in section with the strange corner effect.

    Correct answer Doug A Roberts

    You're in Outline mode. Go to View > Preview (Ctrl + Y).

    4 replies

    M
    MK178
    Participating Frequently
    September 27, 2022

    I had the same problem. with your suggestion now it works!!!!   THANK YOU

     

    jonnyharm
    jonnyharm
    Participant
    October 28, 2022

    I have a similar problem with an svg file of a qr code created on a website. I open up the svg in Illustrator and the black on transparent qr code is defined as a path in the appearance panel. However, im unable to do anything with the piece and it looks and acts as if it is a raster piece. Unable to to expand appearance, unable to release compound path, unable to add a stroke, unable to apply any pathfinder function, uable to see individual anchors or path outlines, unable to image trace, AND unable to select any clippings mask option from the top menu. Clearing the appearnce made it disapear without any outlines. After tweaking out for sometime in frustration I opened the transparency panel and noticed a mask. I released the mask and problem solved! So lame! I would feel like a complete idiot had it not been for the fact that all the mask transparency settings were greyed out in the dropdown menus above with the exception of flatten transparency. I gave flatten transparency no mind during my troubleshoot becuase duh, it was an already flat blak and white single layer vector file with no effects etc (except for a redundant transparency mask, cheap qr generator sheesh). So frustrating. ^(*￣(oo)￣)^

    D
    dougvankampen
    Participant
    January 23, 2023

    HEY! After an exhaustive troubleshooting session (reinstalling and whatnot), I ended finding a solution. View>Pixel Preview. Viola!

    F
    FQN
    Participant
    February 14, 2022

    I have the same issue. No matter what I do, I can't have a stroke on any of my shapes. I have tried everything mentioned here. Opacity of the stroke is 100% . Cleard the appearance and did it again too. Tried adding the effect of outline too. Nothing happens. 

     

    DanaBinAZ
    DanaBinAZ
    Participating Frequently
    March 9, 2022

    Same issue, checked all of the ideas above and nothing works!

      Ton Frederiks
      Community Expert
      Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 9, 2022

      Can you share an Illustrator file that shows the problem?

      CC filesharing, DropBox, Google, WeTransfer...

      bretwoodh77667362
      bretwoodh77667362Author
      Participating Frequently
      January 27, 2020

      I found a solution! Fiddling with the appearance menu in an attempt to expand what it shows as suggested by Ton_Frederiks, I found that if I click "Clear Appearance" this removes whatever the offending attribute is.

       

      So to lay it out for anyone who googles into this thread in the future:

      • Select the offending object.
      • Open the appearance menu (e.g. by going to Window -> Appearance)
      • Click the hamburger (little horizontal lines) at the upper right corner of the Appearance menu, and select "Clear Appearance."
      • Assign the stroke and other sytles - in my case the problem was fixed.
        Ton Frederiks
        Community Expert
        Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        January 27, 2020

        I downloaded your file and it was what I suspected, your stroke had an opacity setting of 0%.

          Grant H
          Community Expert
          Grant HCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          January 27, 2020

          Hi Bret, what does your appearance panel look like with it selected?

           

          bretwoodh77667362
          bretwoodh77667362Author
          Participating Frequently
          January 27, 2020

          Looks normal - says there is a stroke:

          Grant H
          Community Expert
          Grant HCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          January 27, 2020

          can you upload that ai file?

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