Unidentified dash / gap values get shown as zeroes
Make a simple test (as demonstrated in the attached GIF).
Make sure you test this after relaunching Illustrator.
Open Preferences > Units and make sure you have all three parameters (General, Stroke, Type) set to Points.
A. Create a new document based on Web document profile
B. Create a simple rectangle
C. In the Stroke panel enable Dashed Line option
The first 'dash' value would be 12 pt (or somethin else if you general units are not points), and the rest of the fields would be empty, undefined. It means Illustrator uses the same 12 pt for the gap.
D. Now create a document using Print profile
E. Create a rectangle
F. Enable Dashed Line once more
Looks the same, right?
J. Go to Preferences again and change the General units to Millimeters.
Look at the dash-gaps values — for some reason all values but one are now zeros!
While it might SEEM like 'whatever', it’s actually not, and this bug was not present in CS6.
K. Here’s why it’s a problem. Create a duplicate of this rectangle and tab through all the dash and gap fields in the Stroke panel, confirming these zeroes for real.
Now you have a rectangle with the same exact values Ai had before, but it looks completely solid!
And if you select the original one — it suddenly has only the first value dash set, and not all of them.
So Ai just lies.
For some reason when units get toggled (and it’s common when you work in both media at the same time), Ai puts 'zeroes' — but it doesn’t mean 'undefined'. This was working fine in older versions (I checked CS6).
This causes us to believe the dash settings are not what they are.
And while it seems like rare occurrence — no, it happens regularly, and it sucks.
Please fix it.
AdminEgor Chistyakov
(Admin, Adobe Illustrator)
shared this idea
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hamko1114
commented
I agree with what Egor wrote.
It's a small but very annoying bug, and I have the same problem.When I create Illustrator tutorials (even if they are official Adobe ones), I am forced to take screenshots in the wrong state.
Dashed lines are a common feature that I always explain to beginners, so if they're not in the right state, they'll get confused.Illustrator is an app for professionals, so incorrect results of drawing with the set values should be avoided.
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