help basic brush

[le_Rodo_]

I once tried to change the settings of the basic brush using the dropdown menu. I would like to reset it to the default setting (basic brush), but I have problems to do so. When I set it back and use the brush it continue to change to to previous settings of 5 pt bold. How can I keep the default settings of the basic brush again (basic line) without selecting every time the traces. (to get the trace with the basic brush at the moment I need to do everytime two steps...trace the line, select it and set it to basic, the thing is that I want to avoid this and get the trace immediately in the right way using the basic brush)

[Doug A Roberts]

perhaps you'd be better off with the pencil tool rather than brush if you just want a freehand line with a stroke weight.

[le_Rodo_]

thanks a lot for your reply, in fact with the pencil tool I managed to do what I needed to do

[Doug A Roberts]

no problem. it is one of the confusing facts of the Illustrator interface that 'Basic' is not a brush as such, even though it appears as if you can select it as one. selecting 'basic' is a way of clearing brush attributes from your stroke, i.e. telling illustrator you don't want a brush. then when you try and draw with the brush tool again it just picks the last one used. because the brush tool always uses a brush.

[federico platon]

Create a trace the way you like with a Stroke value, a Width profile,... then create a Graphic Style to be able to save it and reuse it.

Then, open the Appearance panel, you will notice a * right the stroke value if a width profile was applied. The main point is to deselect the option of: New Art has Basic Appearance.

Thus, you pick now the Pencil tool and draw with those previous settings, and then yu can change width, color, ....

(Make sure you unselected the Keep Selected checkbox in the Pencil Tool options)