- In this movie, we'll take a look at three more
elements of strokes inside Illustrator:
Caps, Joins and Miter Limit.
And, they all hinge on that notion that Illustrator
is less concerned about the total line weight,
and more concerned about the two halves
of the line weight on either side of the Path Outline.
In our case, notice that I have a straight line,
with two end points,
and my line weight is set to 200 points.
So, in other words we have 100 points of line weight
on the top side of the path and another 100 points
of line weight below the path.
Now, I'll go ahead and click on the word Stroke,
up here in the Control Panel, and notice our Cap options
right here; these three options effect the appearance
of the Stroke at an end point.
They only effect open path outlines.
By default, the Butt Cap is selected,
which means that the stroke ends abruptly at the end point.
You have two other options
that are available to you as well;
you've got the Round Cap that's going to go ahead
and wrap the stroke around the end point,
in a round fashion as we're seeing right here.
What we essentially have, is a circle here
at the end point, with a radius that's equal to
half of the line weight, so in other words, 100 points.
What happens is the stroke extends in this case,
100 points beyond the end point in either direction.
You're other option is a Projecting Cap,
which goes ahead and draws a square from that end point.
Again, it extends outward, half the line weight,
or in our case, 100 points from either end point.
Once again bear in mind, that the Cap Option
only effects open paths;
it has no effect on closed path outlines.
I'm going to go ahead and turn this layer off,
and turn the next layer angle on.
I'll go ahead and click on its path outline to select it.
The next row of options, control the joins.
The joins effect the appearance
of corners in a path outline.
If your path doesn't have any corners,
as in the case of a circle, then you won't see any effect.
I'll once again click on the word Stroke,
up here in the Control Panel,
and notice these corner options right here,
they do indeed control the appearance of corners
in the path outlines, but each of the icons
themselves, are labeled Join.
By default, we have a Miter Join,
meaning that the stroke extends all the way
out until it meets its other side,
and you end up with a sharp corner.
Your other options are a Round Join,
in which case Illustrator goes ahead
and wraps half the line weight around that corner point
as we're seeing right here.
Again, we now have a corner that's made up of a circle,
with a radius of half the line weight,
which in our case, is again, 100 points;
or you can switch to a Bevel Join which is going to
go ahead and slice off that corner.
You may wonder, why Illustrator weights just
a little bit farther out than a corner point,
in order to do the slicing.
That's explained by this Imposition Layer right here.
I'll go ahead and turn it on, so that we can see
the calculation that Illustrator is running.
It's looking at the stroke as it's applied to each segment
independently, so as a result, the corners come out
a little bit, and then it connects the corners,
in order to create that Bevel Join right there.
I'm going to turn that layer off,
so that we can see the effects of the Miter Limit.
To get a sense for how that works,
I'll bring back up the Stroke Panel,
and I'll reset the Corner Option to the Miter Join,
like so, at which point we see this Limit Value,
as you can see right there.
I'm going to go ahead and zoom out,
and then I'll press the A Key
in order to select my white arrow
and I'll click on this Top Anchor Point.
I'll go ahead and drag it down while pressing the Shift Key,
so that I'm making the angle more acute and notice as I do,
that Miter Join goes flying farther out;
in this case, all the way out into the Pace Board.
But, if I keep dragging it down, at some point,
I'm going to lose the Miter Joint entirely
and Illustrator's going to substitute it with a Bevel Joint.
The idea is, your Miter has just gotten too long.
If you disagree, if you want to bring the Miter back,
then just go ahead and press the V Key to switch
back to the Black Arrow Tool,
and click on that Path Outline,
and the reason I'm having you do that,
is notice that when any one point in a path outline
is deselected, you don't see the Fill and Stroke options
up here in the Control Panel.
In order to see those options, all points in a path
have to be selected;
which you can accomplish of course,
by just clicking on the Path Outline with the Black Arrow
and that goes ahead and brings those Fill and Stroke
options back, at which point, I'll click on the word Stroke,
and I'll click in this Limit Value, and I'll press the
Up Arrow Key, a couple of times, and notice if I increase
the limit to 12 X, then I get my Miter Join back,
but I can once again lose that Miter, by pressing the A Key,
and marqueeing that end point right there,
and dragging it down a little more,
and notice the more acute the angle gets,
the more likely I am to lose that Miter.
Now, I'll just go ahead and zoom out a little more,
and maybe pan this art board to the right,
and I'll press the V Key to switch back to
the Black Arrow Tool.
I'll click on this Path Outline to select it,
I'll click on the word Stroke again
and now I'll click in this Limit Value,
and I'll just keep pressing the Up Arrow Key
until I see this Miter Joint come back,
which happens for me at 24 X.
What in the world does that mean?
It's 24 times half the line weight once again.
In our case, Illustrator is allowing the Miter Join
to extend 24 times 100, that is 2400 points
away from that corner point,
and if that's what you want, by all means you can go ahead
and accept that effect even though this is obviously
a pretty radical point.
In my case, I think I'll make things right again,
by pressing the A Key to get the White Arrow Tool,
Clicking the Stop Anchor point to select it
and then dragging up while pressing the Shift Key,
until I regain a semblance of my original Miter like so.
That's how you take advantage
of Caps, Joins and Miter Limits.
In the next movie, I'll show you a practical application.