Hey, can you please post the screenshot of your layers expanded ?   I'd like a clearer picture of your stacking order, because it looks like you are using visible bounds from groupLevel1, while you really want the ones from groupLevel2    ... View more

Your variable has to be outside the for-loop: var flag = false; for(var i=0; i<doc.layers.length; i++){      if(doc.layers.name == 'Special Name'){           flag = true;      }      if(flag == false){           // do the thing      } }; Is this correct? ... View more

If you use the approach you have now, you will potentially need to go through all the pathitems in your group to see if one of them is clipping == true, or something.  However, if you recall our last conversation about groupitem and layers references, you would have to dig through your entire group recursively to find the one you are looking for.  Still, you can make this process easier as well, using what I call the "selection hack"  where you make your group selected, and then use Document.pathitems collection to go through it and if(pathItem.selected == true), then it's a path item in your selected group.  Although you must be aware that with complex art of many hundreds or thousands of paths , this may have a slowing effect on your script. ... View more

So now it's kind-of getting confusatory here, so I'd like to step back a moment and offer a different approach.  Through the screenshots it looks like you want to put artboards around art objects, and the visible bounds with clip paths is complicating things.  I offer you my own technique for this: make your target art group selected (groupItem.selected = true), make a new artboard and use document.artboards.fitToSelectedArt() to fit the temporary board to the edges of your art group.  Then, you will be able to resize your new board if you need buffer on edges.  This will work CS5 and up, that I know of. ... View more

hey, you can probably use the continue keyword in the for loop once you've set up a flag to let you know if something's already been created. ... View more

Oh yes, you are going to have quite some fun with the illustrator specific commands and quirks.  This is a great way to get into js, that's what I did, too. ... View more

To do this without certainty of how many are where, you can use a custom function with some for loops to try and detect if that one you are looking for does exist. ... View more

Looking at your example, (and now we are getting into the thick of things) , I would say that the group you want to access would be possible just like your written solution.  You can also write document.groupItems[0].groupItems[1].groupItems[0] ... View more

Oh yea, the reason behind this is easily understood when you get the following clarification: document.groupItems  refers to all the group items in the document, regardless of layer, or parent group(s).  For an example, if you have a set of groups nested inside a top-level group in layer 1, the document.groupItems.length will refer to all of them, but looking at the groupItems of that first layer will only show you the top-level group in the layer. It also works the same way for groupItem.groupItems You can now see that when it comes to pageItems, pathItems or other items, looking at the document or looking at the partition of the document takes you between two extremes: you either get all of it, or just one of it.  Methods of dealing with this may vary completely, depending on the kind of file structure is in place and what work needs to be done. ... View more

What you have there in a need for an in_array function of some kind, you can swipe something from here: JavaScript equivalent of PHP's in_array() - Stack Overflow Then, there will be a need to still differentiate the swatches with .color and .name  ... View more

Hey, I dug up this from a script I did a long time ago:                 for(var s=0; s<swcs.length; s++){                     var thisSw=swcs ;                     if(thisSw.color!="[PatternColor]" && thisSw.color!="[GradientColor]"                         && thisSw.name!="[Registration]" && thisSw.name!="[None]"){                         //stuff                     }                 } So it looks like, swatch.color can be matched up against strings "[PatternColor]" or "[GradientColor]", otherwise, you can use swatch.name to select against Registration and None. ... View more

I was also going to suggest eval() since this is assumed to be pretty-much as the user is the creator of the process anyways. ... View more

I am not sure what's the preferred result here, do you want the teal square between the artboards, or within an artboard? ... View more

I don't think you need to use a variable such as newRuler for setting a rulerOrigin:  simply activeArtboards.rulerOrigin = [#,#] will do -- However that may not be what you want. What you are experiencing is the document vs artboard rulerOrigin.  As you set active indexes of artboards, Document.rulerOrigin changes, but Document.artboards.rulerOrigin may remail at [0,0]    .. I hope this helps. ... View more

try aB.setActiveArtboardIndex(a);  ... View more

I am doing this right now, and I as well have done the same: place the pdf and fit a frame to it- to get geometric bounds. ... View more

I use Autohotkey for Windows and Spark on Mac to use a hotkey to run them, also there's the ScriptBay extension which runs only on CS5: http://in-tools.com/article/script-bay/script-panel-replacement-for-the-entire-creative-suite/ ... View more

There is a checkbox in the Blob Brush menu (which you get by double-clicking the blob brush tool icon) which allows you to keep the whole path selected.  Is that it? ... View more

Is this what you were looking for? EPSSaveOptions.flattenOutput   Data Type: OutputFlattening , Default Value: OutputFlattening.PRESERVEAPPEARANCE Adobe Illustrator 18 Type Library How should transparency be flattened for older file format versions (pre-version 9) the other value is OutputFlattening.PRESERVEPATHS ... View more

Try artboards.add([0,0,200,-50]); It's something to do with the coordinates?  Honestly, I have not achieved mastery of the rectangles, and documentation is not very helpful in differentiating the "rect" value when using these various commands. ... View more

The Compound Shape is different from Compound Path, especially to us because it is a "PluginItem" according to the DOM.  A plugin item is like a mystery box!  Also, any fancy CS6+ commands to run actions aren't an option because CS5.  ... View more

I am going to try and put a snippet together of the example proposed above, but it's all new to me ... View more

It okay is, because this will be great learning for our minds!  There is a way, to have your Extendscript execute the AHK script which tells it to "send" the F-keys as if it came from your keyboard.  The action will go, but I am not very clear on how out of synch the action will be with the script.  At first thought , putting $.sleep() may do the trick, especially if your action does not take long & there's not a big chance of it having to take long.  Well, anywho, after the time break, it will go do its script thing, which is select the next shape or group (pageItem).  And at the end, hey, you can try tacking on the PSD saving using the export with ExportOptionsPhotoshop- but that's later!  imagecollection has some examples here of executing an AHK script from the jsx script, check 'em out! ... View more

Ok, do you use AutoHotKey already?  The solution I am thinking of, involves using AHK scripts to trigger the action which makes the compound shape. ... View more

Okay, CS5.. are you on PC or Mac now? ... View more

Are you using CC, or at least CS6?  Are the items you need to be thus converted just top-level items in a top-level layer?  Because that can be done!  Otherwise, it can also be done with more work.. ... View more