Expert: Amy - 1/29/2009

Question
QUESTION: I'm using a mac OS X 10.4.11

In Illustrator CS2, I want to preserve the stroke weight (outside) on a shape but when I go to outline the stroke (object > path) it changes the stroke to center & will not let me change it back to outside.  In older versions of Illustrator, it would outline the stroke on a shape as it is & would not change it to a different setting (ie: from outside to center)...Thanks.


ANSWER: Hi Ge,

Funny you should mention this. I just ran into this problem the other day.

What I ended up doing:

Object > Path > Offset path by +50% of current weight. For example, if your path is 20pts, type 10pt in the box.

Then change the stroke to center alignment.

Then Outline the stroke.

That's the only way I could figure out to do it!

Does this help?
Amy

-----this has been modified. I gave you incorrect info in my first answer, in case you have already read it.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you!  Your solution worked perfectly and was very easy!

My only other question is: Any reason why there are these additional steps to achieve this (compared to older versions of Illustrator)?

Thanks again!

Answer
Glad it worked.

All I can think of is that they did not fully explore the implications of adding the "align to outside" feature for stroke in CS2.

Seems to me CS2 is the first version to offer it. The bug still exists in CS3, which I use.

I believe they fixed this in CS4 but I don't own CS4 yet.

At least there's a workaround, right?

Amy