Pencil tool fidelity(?) issue when smoothing lines

[annm89579550]

Hello,

I'm a professional illustrator, been using AI for years.  I opened up my computer this morning and tried to work on a document in Illustrator and noticed the pencil tool having really weird behavior.  The lines were coming out quite wobbly, and when I tried to retrace them to smooth them (a common part of my drawing guesture), it doesn't smooth, it adds more anchor points and makes it more wobbly.  I tried looking it up and saw that it might be the fidelity setting but I hadn't changed the fidelity since last night.  When I did turn smooth up to max, it made a slight improvement, but was still nowere near the behaviour I was used to.  I tried hooking up my older Wacom and the problem persisted it's not the tablet.  Reinstalled Illustrator and problem persisted.  I booted up my old laptop tried the pen tool in Illustrator on that device.  It worked exactly the way I expected.  Same tablet, same version of Illustrator.  Only thing that's different is the computer.  I'm on a 2018 Macbook pro running Big Sur 11.1. The old laptop is on Mojave 10.14.4.  Could it be the OS?  I updated my new laptop weeks ago, I'm not sure why it would suddenly create a problem for Adobe.  

I've attached a video that demonstrates what's happening.  The first part is the weird, wobbly behavior I expereinced this morning on the Big Sur device.  The second part is the behavior on the Mojave device.  This is what I expect to happen with the pencil tool

[annm89579550]

Update: I reverted to the previous version of Illustrator (25.0.1) and got it to work as expected.  I'm still not sure what the problem was

[Monika Gause]

So you are using a Wacom?

Can you check if its driver is fully compatible with Big Sur?

And maybe it needs a preferences reset?

[5JF9B]

I too had the exact same issue with the pencil tool, right after Illustrator automatically updated this morning. When going over a line while drawing it adds a lot of extra points that it never did before. If you go over a line more that once, it keeps adding even more points. I know the problem is with the update, because I too reverted to the program prior to the update and the issue is resolved. Please, Adobe, correct this pencil issue in your latest update. 

[Monica Rief]

I also had the same issue with the pencil tool. My pencil tool kept adding extra points when I tried to draw over it to smooth it out. After reading this conversation, I reverted to the previous version of Illustrator (25.0.1) and got it to work as it had before. Thank you for posting your update @annm89579550 ! I hope Adobe fixes this bug in their next update. 

[michelew83603738]

You might want to report it at: 

https://illustrator.uservoice.com

Although they may already be aware of it.

You coul also tweet to them at: @jaswest to see if they have heard about it and have any quick help tips.

[Srishti Bali]

Hi all,

Sorry about the trouble this issue has caused. We've fixed this in the latest release. Please update Illustrator to v25.2.3  to get this fixed. Here's a link with more details: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/42559438-lines-...

Regards,

Srishti