Pattern making & layering on illustrator for screen printing - layers cannot align. Please help!

[thea5ED6]

Hi There, 

I am using illustrator for screen printing. The idea is the object with be duplicated and created into a pattern on illustrator. 

The image has two layers. One layer is the outline of the object and the second layer is the block colour of the object.  

When I go to make x 2 patterns of these x 2 layers and overlay them, they are not alligned. It seems the pattern has shifted the image to the left slightly every time it has duplicated the object. So some objects are alligned, other's are not. 

For print screening you need to make sure they are all aligned so you can imagine my fustration! Can anyone help, what am I doing wrong or is this a glitch in pattern making / layering in Illustrator? 

[michelew83603738]

Are you aligning to the pixel grid? 

[thea5ED6]

Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry i'm new to illustrator how do i align to the pixel grid?

[Ton Frederiks]

Do both patterns have the same pattern tile size?

Is Transform Pattern Tiles checked in Preferences?

[thea5ED6]

Hi Ton, I found out yesterday that the tiles are actually slightly different. When creating the pattern how do you guarantee the exact same tile size? I think that should fix it. 

Looking forward to your response. 

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

It depends how you make the pattern.

The old way was creating a no stroke no fil rectangle at the back of your pattern and drag it with the pattern to the swatches panel.  The no stroke no fil rectangle determines the size

The new way is using the Paternmaker (Object > Pattern > Make) you can see the tile size in the patternmaker panel.