Terrible Illustrator CS3 Bugs – Random moving and scaling
via Brad Merritt, Lead Game Designer @ Cartoon Network:
I am using Illustrator CS3 to create level layouts for an ingenious tool my Flash programmer wrote to parse my Illustrator layouts into proper level data for our game. This has made the workflow of game design to game programming smoother than ever. I simply place symbols from the library that are named in concert with our Flash elements.
However, an Illustrator problem is causing me unending headaches and lost work.
First, I struggled to find an easy way to make sure all objects snapped to whole pixel values (no decimals) and I could move objects by a single pixel. I finally settled in making 1px grid and turning on SNAP TO GRID.
Small Issue: Setting a grid size of 10px subdivided by 1px made my keyboard increments move 8px though my Keyboard Increments preferences is set to 1px. Setting grid to 1px fixed this.
Small Issue: Snap to grid works except when you drag a symbol from the library to the stage it does not snap to the grid. You have to move it again after you place it to make it snap to the grid.
Big Issue: Illustrator randomly moves and scales my objects on document close/open.
Step 1: This is my placed symbol with snap to grid.
Step 2: Save and close the file
Step 3: Open the same file and you get this:
This is happening to myself and my colleague working on a different machine on different documents on Illustrator 13.0 and 13.01 Windows XP SP2.
Posted in Adobe, Bugs, Illustrator, Workflow
October 18th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Steve, thanks for posting this. It at least verifies for me that I am not insane; rather Adobe is.
I can confirm that Illustrator's snap-to-grid features are utterly broken and useless in CS3 on XP. I can't test other platforms, but I do recall having seen these same sorts of problems using grids in prior versions of Illustrator.
No matter how you set up your grid, no matter how you use objects, groups, or symbols, it just doesn't work. Any number of methods of dragging shapes can result in points being placed not on the grid. Even the simplest thing like dragging the edge of an object or a hollow point with the hollow arrow doesn't work most of the time.
This is extremely unfortunate too because for the number one design app in the world to not have the most basic adherence to grids is just ridiculous. Many other posts online just say to turn off grids, or use snap to point. Meh.
If you really know the math going on under the scenes, this feature _should_ allow you to design pixel-accurate objects that work the same whether you bring the artwork into Flash or Photoshop. Sadly this is just not the case.
What's worse – it also renders using Symbols on grids useless. You double click a symbol to edit it, make changes to force its points onto the grid, and then escape the symbol… your object is now completely off the grid! It's just embarrassing. Adobe really needs to get their act together.