Adobe Illustrator - Joining vectors

Author

Joining vectors

Johonna

2006-12-06, 6:21 pm

Is there an easier way to join a bunch of short lines into one long
line than selecting the endpoints for each segment and using the "join"
command? Exporting from CAD makes lots of little lines and it is
really tedious to sit there and join them all. There must be some
clever work-around!

Thanks,
Johonna

inez

2006-12-06, 6:21 pm

On 11/21/06 5:22 PM, Johonna commented:

> Is there an easier way to join a bunch of short lines into one long
> line than selecting the endpoints for each segment and using the "join"
> command? Exporting from CAD makes lots of little lines and it is
> really tedious to sit there and join them all. There must be some
> clever work-around!
>
> Thanks,
> Johonna

In playing, I drew a polygon and then cut it at the anchors. Oddly, when I
selected all and tried some Pathfinder buttons, the Divide one made it one
path; gave it a stroke and there it was, all neatly connected again. I can't
say this is the right way or that it'll work for you, but it worked this
once.

hth,
inez

Alex Tuma

2006-12-06, 6:21 pm

The Concatenate Plug-in available from
http://rj-graffix.com/software/plugins.html will do the job.

Cheers.
A.

jbl

2006-12-06, 6:21 pm

On 21 Nov 2006 15:22:13 -0800, "Johonna" <jshea@northwestarch.com>
wrote:

>Is there an easier way to join a bunch of short lines into one long
>line than selecting the endpoints for each segment and using the "join"
>command? Exporting from CAD makes lots of little lines and it is
>really tedious to sit there and join them all. There must be some
>clever work-around!
>
>Thanks,
>Johonna

Using the plugin mentioned by Alex Tuma is the most simple solution.

I don't know what results that you are expecting, but you will have
"longer" lines consisting of a "bunch" of individual nodes. A new node
is required for each change in direction in the path of the line.

Obviously, by using Illustrator to draw curved lines origionally, you
can have a curved path without a "bunch of nodes". Not so with an
imported file created with another type application (cad, gis, etc...)

jbl

Johonna

2006-12-06, 6:21 pm

Thanks for the info about the plug-in, I will check it out. As for the
nodes, I dont really care how many there are (I can always use simplify
if I need to) but I had two roughly parallel lines, each in many, many
segments -- that is, not jointed into one line, but many lines with
overlapping end nodes. Given that, you cannot select the whole thing
and click Join as there too many endpoints. I needed two joined lines
so I could turn them into a fillable shape. What I ended up doing is
rasterizing the lines and using the live trace function. It worked,
but I was hoping for a more elegant solution. The plug-in sounds just
the thing! Thanks.
Johonna