Dealing with OPEN PATHS in Illustrator in 2 steps
Posted by: MUJKA on: September 15, 2007
Couple little things you need to know about when creating a vector image, especially if you are going to sell it on stock websites
Here are some tips and tricks for making the best out of your work. Mostly time savers.
OPEN PATHS: If you are dealing with open paths, you are in trouble, so try this plug-in from Graffix to FIND THEM FIRST without hassle.
To install this plugin, just drop the plugin in your Adobe Illustrator Plug-ins folder. It works with Adobe Illustrator CS – CS2 and CS3….
What does this plugin do… It actually finds all guides, paths, open paths, closed paths, filled paths, unfilled paths, stroked paths, unstroked paths, dashed paths, undashed paths, compound paths, groups, live object groups, gradient meshes, envelopes, symbols, embedded raster art, and placed art.
It will appear under Select / Object menu.
So after clicking on select open paths, your open paths are selected, now how are we going to close all these paths, here another plug-in to CLOSE THESE PATHS.
This time just drop the plug in in Illustrator scripts folder, it will appear in File/ Scripts menu, and click. All your paths are closed in 2 steps. What a time saver.
Well if you have only couple paths to close just click on the open path and press CTRL + J to join them, personally I never use this.
28 Responses to "Dealing with OPEN PATHS in Illustrator in 2 steps"
April 16, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Thank you so much for the links to the plug-ins. I’ve recently started uploading my illustrations to sell as stock and I had a few rejected because of open paths. Thanks for the help.
Marie
April 17, 2008 at 9:14 am
no problem
hope your stuff get approved soon and good luck on sales.
May 17, 2008 at 2:53 pm
select the open paths and press ctrl+J it will close the open paths… have fun!!!!!
May 28, 2008 at 11:57 am
The close path plugin is pure bliss! Why is this not already part of illustrator?
Thanks a million.
May 29, 2008 at 12:48 am
there is so many plugins out there that could be a part of illustrator but usually they are for sale. Not sure why,
they may include this in CS4 maybe..
July 7, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I agree that it should be a part of Illustrator already. When I was a CorelDraw user I liked that I could have my object auto close if I drew the end close enough to the starting point. I was getting really miffed having to find all the open paths to be able to close them.
I did find a plug in that found the open paths first which helped identify where I had work to do but then I had to close them one by one or use a trick to close the paths. The I cam across this page and the next plug in I found finished the job for me
Thanks a lot
January 16, 2009 at 1:54 am
Thank you so much, this is a lifesaver for my stock vector work.
February 27, 2009 at 5:07 pm
the plugins probably are only for CS TO CS3 doesnt cover CS4
March 31, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I tried installing the plug-in as directed “drag and drop it into the illustrator plug-ins folder”, but on initiating illustrator CS & CS3, i could not find the options made available by the plug-in under the select/object menu item. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
March 31, 2009 at 7:10 pm
maybe you have not placed it in the correct folder
it may be under C:/ Program Files / Adobe / Illustrator / Plugins/
depends on where YOU SET UP YOUR ILLUSTRATOR PROGRAM
just get inthe program folders and find Plugin folder and drop the plugin inside this folder
then open illustrator and it appears under Select / Object menu..
Hope that helps
April 4, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I have CS3 on mac. i also put the plugin straight into the plugins folder and no additional options are appearing under select / object..?
thanks.
April 4, 2009 at 5:25 pm
hmm..maybe does not with MAC? Im not sure sweety.
need to reopen the the program, it appears there usually if its in the correct folder but never tried with MAC so not sure about that.
June 7, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I have never understood WHY Adobe never incorporated such a basic operation in Illustrator … one would THINK after acquiring Macromedia a few years back the best attributes of FreeHand would make it into Illustrator. Guess not.
July 17, 2009 at 6:47 pm
I notice a couple of people have the same problem I had getting the SelectMenu plug-in to show up. Here’s how I figured it out:
I went back over the instructions text that is in the downloaded plug-in folder (read me.txt) – it says you can go back to the Graffix web site for plug-in updates. Turns out the plug-in download link provided on this page is only for CS and CS2. I went to Rick Johnson’s web site, found the plug-in for CS3, downloaded it, opened my Plug-ins folder, deleted the old plug-in and put in the new CS3 plug-in, restarted Illustrator CS3 and I now see the options for selecting.
In a nutshell, make sure you have the correct plug-in for your software version and computer type – Mac or PC. I hope this helps.
August 14, 2009 at 9:14 am
Since the plugin is not available for Illustrator CS4 under Windows I wrote my own script for extended selections.
It offers almost the same functionality as the Graffix plugin and adds some more options, including the ability to close any number of open paths with one click.
Since it is a script and not a plugin it should run under future Illustrator versions as well.
The script is free.
You can download it from my site:
http://maps.aridocean.com/scripts_en.php
December 17, 2009 at 12:28 pm
@AridOcean
Many many thanks!
Never knew you can extend Illustrator with js scripts.
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October 10, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Thank you very much for this info, i was dealing myself with this problem for almost a year…i didn’t know that the answer was so easy…Thank you again!