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Attempting to expand a stroke on a group of paths. I have several dozen paths with a 140 pt stroke. When trying to expand them I get many errors. See the images.
Any recommendations for preventing this behavior?
I am using Illustrator 25.2 on macOS 10.14.6.
I found the problem. The stroke was 140 pts aligned to center. I changed it to 70 pts aligned to outside which gives the same visual appearance. When expanded it does not give the errors as earlier.
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After further experimentation, I have found that the small circles are causing the issue. They are approx 0.25 inch in size. Closed paths. The images show the before and after.
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Not sure what is going on here or the result you are looking for. But if you are trying to expand and this is the circle that is giving you the problem, my question is do you need it? The area behind it seems to be covered so that if it were to be expanded, it would just be an unnecessary path anyway that should be simplified. You might also try simplying the path first befor expanding, perhaps that might help. There are so many anchor points here.
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The problem comes down to expanding the small circles. Take a look at the before and after below. Just a single circle so it has nothing to do with the number of points or paths. Are there settings I'm overlooking for expansion?
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There are a lot of anchor points for that small circle, but that aside, is the circle a closed path? The only other thing I can think of is math wise, it can't actually expand that amount of stroke for such a small space, if you understand what I mean.
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I found the problem. The stroke was 140 pts aligned to center. I changed it to 70 pts aligned to outside which gives the same visual appearance. When expanded it does not give the errors as earlier.