Skip to main content
daniel.selbee
daniel.selbee
Participant
April 15, 2019
Answered

Width tool creating artifacts

  • April 15, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 1096 views

Ok. So this has been driving me a little crazy and I haven't found anyone recreate the issue on the forums for some reason. I am working through an illustrator course and one of the video lessons is teaching us about the width tool. Right now I am simply trying to create a path that will match up with some hand lettering. I use the curvature tool and that works fine. I have the path going. The instructor then tells us to bring our stroke width way down as the width tool can create unwanted effects at the end of the path. So I adjust the stroke width down to 0.05 to account for this, but since the path is a circle, this shouldn't matter. Once the stroke has been created, I switch to the width tool and here is the problem I run into.

In the middle of that red circle I have drawn, are seemly an infinite amount of width tool points that are not allowing me to create the shape that I desire to make. Here's another screen of what happens when I try to add another width tool point.

The reason this shape is flipped around is that I had to recreate the issue after trying to switch to a uniform stroke. Anyways, I keep running into the same issue anytime I use the width tool. Any insight as to what's happening would be greatly appreciated!

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Monika Gause

Thank you. THat's not a huge number of extra width points, but those might just be the ones Illustrator usually creates automatically. WHen you define widths using the width tool, Illustrator sometimes comes to the conclusion that it cannot create what you want without automatically creating additional width points. This usually happens on corners, but also happens on a plain ellipse you draw with the ellipse tool. You should be able to delete that width point. Double click on it with the width tool and then hit delete.

1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 15, 2019

Are there corner points on that path?

Is the path closed?

Can you perhaps upload that file to Dropbox or the like?

daniel.selbee
daniel.selbeeAuthor
Participant
April 15, 2019

The path has been closed using the curvature tool. Here's the dropbox link Dropbox - Width-Tool.ai

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
April 15, 2019

Thank you. THat's not a huge number of extra width points, but those might just be the ones Illustrator usually creates automatically. WHen you define widths using the width tool, Illustrator sometimes comes to the conclusion that it cannot create what you want without automatically creating additional width points. This usually happens on corners, but also happens on a plain ellipse you draw with the ellipse tool. You should be able to delete that width point. Double click on it with the width tool and then hit delete.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices