Illustrator CS 2

[da94]

I just installed the latest version of Illustrator at work and started playing the "Does it finally measure up to Xara game." I play this game every time a new version comes out. I started drawing shapes and noticed that there was no visible way to change the roundness of a rounded rectangle.

I went into the help menu and found out that each time you want to adjust the roundness of a rectangle, you have to go into "general preferences" and change the number there, then draw a new rectangle, repeating the process until the rectangle looks right. Wow!!!! What a nice, user friendly system. It only takes about 30 minutes to draw 3 rectangles...

Back to Xara X1. Just like last time.

[Availor]

Actually, in Illustrator you dont have to change the radius in the preferances.
You can change it in the effects menu, another option is to pick the rounded corners rectange and then just click on the canvas. You will get a menu dialog asking for measures and radius corners.
Another option is to drag your shape and while you're still holding your mouse button use your arrow keys (up and down) to change the radius.

[John Rayner]

sounds pretty awkward to me... 7 extra steps... No wonder it is bloatware.

[sallybode]

You can also use the scale tool which is on the toolbar, but it isn't that intuitive. I use theses kinds of programs all the time and I try to use Illustrator as little as possible because it is so dang slow.

I complained about it to one of the college professors which teaches Illustrator, I told him how much faster CorelDRAW and especially Xara X is. He said it was because I really don't know how to use Illustrator.

I told him I did, but he didn't believe me.

He then picks my brain on how to do a duotone. He teaches this stuff.

Today I helped a girl transfer files from zip disks to CD which has gotten a certificate in graphic arts from the local college. I asked her if they had taught her how to do a color separation in Photoshop, you know, in spot color. She had never even heard of spot color.

That is why graphic artists out of college often have to have an apprenticeship if they are going to work in the print industry. The document the college gives them is very pretty, and positively useless.

And they don't know how to do the separations at all, this girl had never even heard of a color separation. She probably has seen the term "CMYK", but has no idea of what it is for, she probably never worked in anything but RGB.

The printer I work for has about 20 applications for a part time graphic arts job right now. (Guess she was getting scared because my vacation is coming up.) And I have to laugh, because there is at best, one qualified applicant in the 20 I read over, that is if you consider working only in Illustrator a qualification, she doesn't know any other software, and we get all kinds of stuff brought in in many different kinds of software. We need someone who at least knows the basics of CorelDRAW or even Xara, it is similar enough that they'd pick DRAW up pretty quickly.

So far none of them are very impressive.

[Albacore]

I have to use AI at work but prefer in most cases to use Xara X1 for freelance and home drawing. To answer your question about CS 2 and rounded corners, select the "rounded corner tool" frrom the menu and double left click on your page, that will open a dialogue box where you can define the hieght, width and roundness of the rectangle.

This method of tool selection works right through all of Adobes programmes which is fair enough and easy to use and as stated in replies before mine there are other ways to skin a cat.

The learning curve for this programme is steep and it will take you a good 6 months to feel even slightly comfortable with it. The main problem with the tools and interface is the editing of your shapes and it its a lot of finger hopping to control the shapes. When you compare this to the speed of learning use to use Xara it is easy to understand why many people pick this programme to use and how fast and easy it is to edit a shapes. Recently I have been drawing pictures which have used different styles of brushes and have found AI a joy to use when compared to Xara.

I could go on giving you positives and negatives for each programme but I think that if you find a programme that you are comfortable with and it does what you want it to do, "Stick with It" and develope your skills with that programme because the results will show in the end product.

[jens g.r. benthien]

The worst feature of the Adobe CS product range is that they love 'to call home'. I've heard they quit running if you don't have an Internet connection (rumors?).

But even though Xara X doesn't export CMYK color separations, you can achieve great results if you throw in the new Acrobat 7 Pro, because this version adds CMYK color separations. Adding the price for Acrobat plus Xara X, you don't spend as much as for Illustrator alone, and you have a superior set up in regards of speed, ease of handling, precision and all the nine yards.

One of the most important feature we use in coop with our photo studio and print shop is to create bitmaps with a high resolution for poster printing. We just add some text on a second layer, and then re-render the pictures, burn them to DVDs and send the extremely large formats to a subcontractor - RGB format! The largest 'poster' we've printed this year was almost 3 x 5 meters, thats around 9 x 15 feet.

If you try to render a TIF @600 dpi with Photoshop CS, it takes ages - with Xara just a few seconds (with a laptop!). Amazing and really a cutting edge advantage.

[Jerry.Yoder]

You can change the corner radius by using the up and down arrow keys while you are draging with the rounded rectangle tool.

I use CS2 to design signs for work. The thing that makes it useful to me is the plugin I purchased called CadTools. It adds dimensioning and the ability to draw in scale along with other cad tools. Illustrator is not nearly as fast as Xara X1 but is seems that none of the programs have it all.

For me I use the program that works for the effect I am trying to achieve at the time.

Jerry

[Availor]

Actually Illustrator is a terrific program if you know how to use it, because of it's effects, because of its symbol and brushes libraries. It's great for technical designs

[jens g.r. benthien]

Huh? Can you tell me how you develop i.e. a casing for a vacuum cleaner with brushes and symbols? Or a household product? With perfect data for a CNC machine to produce tools? That's more than hilarious.

Illustrator with a plug-in a CAD tool? What a nightmare! Two years ago I had a customer who boasted he used Illustrator with a CAD plug-in. I trusted him, until I had to find out that we couldn't use **any** of his drawings.

Come on guys, Illustrator is way too limited to be considered a serious development or CAD or even technical drawing tool. Even my 16 year old 2D CAD tool DrawingBoard will beat Illustrator in terms of speed, versatility, precision (up to 16 digits!), and functioning export formats.

Ever tried to connect two lines with a specific section of a circle (tangent, tangent, radius) - one of the most simple tasks? Or a curve with another curve and a line (tangent, tangent, tangent)?

Not to mention parametrics for either single elements or entire objects...

[Availor]

Jens, I was not talking about a very complex and precise drawing, though Illustrator and Freehand are used for technical drawings. Technical does not always mean two digit precise. I am needed to create physical/mathematical graphs and sketches for Collage/school/University books. They do not have to be precise.

That task is much quicked when I have all my formulas, circles, semicircles etc placed in the library drwaing, or if I want to show the difference between many lines using brush styles (for example black line indicating a vector over a gray surface which means static energy). If I used XaraX I would have to either draw it all again or use another file to copy and ungroup all those files from.

Sure if you want exact measures illustrator is not a cad tool, but having AutoCad to calculate sinus/tangent/cosinus etc.... it's like driving a tank to a supermarket