Illustrator :: Minus Front Won't Work Over Pie Chart
Oct 16, 2012
I use minus front all the time... well, I'm trying to make a pie chart with just the outside (see example). The logical way to do this to me is the make the pie chart, put an ellipse over everything and "minus front" it using the pathfinder tool. Well, I did this, and even though "minus front" is an available option--I can even click it--nothing happens when I click it. Even when I isolate each wedge of the pie chart, I cannot get any part of it to clip using "minus front."
I've been attempting to create a cut- out border using the Minus Front tool, within the Pathinder window, in order to cut small circles out of the edge of a rectangle, giving it that perforated, stamp-edge look to its sides. Unfortunately, everytime I try to use the Minus Front option to cut them away from the rectangle, I end up making all of the circles disappear, except for the one that was originally selected, and I simply cannot make the Minus Front happen the way I'm looking for.
What I have, with my circles drawn out and properly spaced, looks like this:
So, I take the regular selection tool, hold down Shift, and select them all, being extra careful not to click on the rectangle itself:
And select the Minus Front option, only to be left with:
I am creating some icons with numbers on. I need them to be on a transparent background. I have created the main shape and I simple what to cut out the number that I have put in the middle so it will appear the same colour as the background. I have successfully done this with some of the icons by using the following process:
Create the Number with the text tool > Create Outline > Select Object and main Shape > Use Minus Front Path Finder Tool.
This was all going really well until I got to 4. When I minus the number object the shape distorts so the upright column of the 4 becomes wide then the original text version. The change is too much to ignore. The same problem happens with 10, 11 and 12. The problem appears to be with the upright columns but strangely is not a problem with the 1.
It looks like the path anchors are snaping to the grid I have no the Artboards. The scale of the distortion depends on the distance from the nearest gridline. I have tried turn off snap to grid and the grid itself but I still get the same result.
What i'm trying to do is cut multiple circles in half (45° angle), i know that i need first "outline stroke" to make the circle lines into object (i think it's called). I have used "offset path" to get more of these lines.
I was told that if i want to cut the other half of the circle i need to use pathfinder, but everytime i use the "minus front" option, it leaves me with only on half circle while i mad 2 circles, the second circle disapppeard. How can i cut both circles in one go. (is there a way to combine these circles (not grouping))
Copying an excel chart (2010 and/or 2013, Windows 7 Ultimate) to Illustrator CS6 works okay if line chart lines are solid... but if they are dotted, then in Excel 2010, the dotted line becomes jumbled, and in Excel 2013, the dotted line converts to a solid line... is the only solution to this to save the excel chart as a pdf, or is there another workaround?
Essentially, I am creating a chart in excel and adding a few notations and graphic elements in illustrator for professional publishing..
How do you ungroup or expand a pie chart in Adobe Illustrator CS6? This functionality seems to have been removed. Say I'd like to remove the legend: before, I could ungroup the chart, release its link to the data, and then delete the legend with my white mouse. Object > Expand no longer works either.
we have a website concept in Illustrator CS3, with named swatches for all colors. I'm wondering if there is an easy or 'semi-automated' way to generate a chart of the swatches we are using, showing there hex values?
I know I could draw out a bunch of boxes, fill them with the swatch colors, and manually look up and type in the hex values for each. But this would take a LONG time, as there are a number of color variations.
I have some trouble with copy/paste charts from Excel 2010 into Illustrator CS5. I can move things around, but I can not change the colours in Illustrator. The chart is shown as a picture graphic, not a vector in Illustrator. Also when I save the Excel chart in a PDF and try to open it in Illustrator CS5 it is still a picture, not a vector graphic. Where is the bug? (I am using Windows 7.)
When I copied and pasted charts from excel, the lines are all doubled. This is the first time I got this. I could not figure out what is the difference between these double lines and the regular lines. Any clues how to change the lines to regular ones. I am using AI CC.
I want to create a creative graphic chart in Illustrator and place it into Word. the catch is that the client -- who doesn't use Illustrator -- wants to update it later. Is that a possibility? If not directly in Illustrator is there another app which would would play nicely with Word?
I have an MS Word 2011 document with an Excel pie chart embedded.Double-clicking the pie chart will open it in Excel 2011.Copying/pasting the chart into Illustrator CS6 results in an uneditable bit image.
Previously, with Word 2008 and Illustrator CS2, this worked perfectly. Mind you, I had tons of excess empty paths and such to scrape out, but still, after a couple of minutes' scraping, I had an editable .ai file ready to be cleaned up, captions typeset, and colors edited for export to .eps and placement in InDesign
In fact, right now I've had to jump over to my old iBook G4 to open my old copies of Word 2008 and Illustrator CS2 in order to do this so I can get this job out the door.Is there any way at all that I can get an Excel 2011 pie chart into Illustrator CS6 as a vector image?
I've tried the shift-click on "Copy Picture" method, but the pie chart still appears as a bit image, and the text is turned to gibberish. Saving the chart as a pdf returns the same results.
At this point in the project, asking for the raw data set and regenerating the pies in Illustrator isn't an option -- and besides, I've had to do that before. Oh, the pain.
Is there a way to make a trend line with the chart tools in AI? Specifically, a polynomial trendline. I am so disappointed with the apparent limitations of the chart tools available.
We recently built our new company website which we're happy enough with. However one element we tried to capture was an interactive donught shaped pie chart, using javascript to click on each seperate section.
The end result can be viewed at URL....
You'll notice imemdiately that the part that's a little off is the text which sits in each section. IS there an easier way to combine the graphic, text and javascript to achieve the effect we're looking for?
I' m importing Excel 2008 excel pie charts to illustrator CS5. I am cutting and pasting content between the applications to import. When importing a pie chart - the chart imports OK, but the pie elements import as low resiolution non-vector elements. Is there a way to import as 100% vector elements? Note - all other chart types - bar graphs etc import fine!.
I am working on a scatter chart in Illustrator. We would like to use circles instead of the default square. I have figured out how to create and use a custom graphic for this. However, no matter what size circle I create, it seems to default back to the size of what the square was.
Is there any way to customize the size of the graphic objects used in the scatter chart?
The calibri font used for graphs in Excel are not recognized when the graphs are copied into Adobe Illustrator. Other than changing the font to arial or another font. I upgraded from CS4 to CS6 on my mac and I still get the same error, "An unknown shading type was encountered," and the letters in the chart get substituted with jumbled symbols. I've tried copy the chart directly from excel to illustrator as well as saving it as a pdf or postcript file and then opening in illustrator. But neither approach works.
A friend managed to open the chart in Illustrator (CS5 on a mac) which gave the prompt that it cannot read the font and that it will display it as outlines. This worked and the text was displayed properly. But for some reason I never received this promopt whether using illustrator from CS4 or CS6.
We have a Visual Basic Script that creates pie charts using Adobe Illustrator along with an internally created app called Chart Generator. An xml file that contains a markup for a set of pie charts is imported into Chart generator and by using Illustrator it generates all of the pie charts and saves them as individual eps files.
It was recently discovered that not all of the pie slices are proportioning correctly. In some cases a slice that is 10% of the pie appears larger than a slice that is 13% of the pie. We can’t determine a pattern that might be causing this issue. We think that the problem is in the Visual Basic coding.
I brought a pdf into Illustrator and I want to draw a line over a portion of that pdf, but when I draw the line it appears to place it behind the pdf - obscuring portions of the line. I have tried selecting the new line and bringing it to the front or selecting the pdf and sending it to the back without any success.
what I do, my text box will not come to the front of my color-filled box. Is this a pc bug? I am used to working on Illustrator with a mac and experience little problems. I am using CS5 with Windows 7.
I'm new to the adobe family and I'm working on a design for one of my friends and he came across a look he was wanting. The problem is I cant figure out how to get the text that is overlapping to alternate from in front to behind and so on and so forth.
I have illustrator cs6 on mac OSX 10.8.2 and when I hit command f .. for copy in front .. i get a text box with my signature and address in it. I cant remember assigning command F ever to this? but maybe I did many years ago. As I am just delving into illustrator, it has never been an issue but obviously, now it is. I have looked at edit>keyboard shortcuts but am unfamiliar with it and so dont want to mess with it. How to get command F to function as it should?
on my Windows 7 home computer I am able to create UI progress bars and popup messages for my UI window and everything works just fine. Now, I come to work on the Macintosh and they don't work so well. In this question, I would like to learn if there is a technique to bring a palette to the front when one is created, such as for this progress bar example, on a Mac. The palette appears deactivated and in back for me. It is unseen most of the time because it appears in the center of the screen behind the window by default, and when I move my window we can see the palette but there is no progress bar going on.
As you can see in the screenshot, my main window is deactivated because I attempted to get the progress bar active by deactivating the main window, obviously not successful. I also set the palette to active, which did not work.And, as I have implied, on my home computer on Windows things appear just as expected with the progress bar working and palettes appearing in front and active.
I am having trouble with the Paste in Front/Back function. I will copy my selected layers and then want to paste them in place on the selected artboard next to it and often times it pastes it back on the artboard where it copies from. Sometimes the function does what I want, but often times it pastes in a different location, either on the same artboard, or next to the artboard where I want it pasted. It also tends to slightly move the X and Y values (again, sometimes). Each time I go to paste, I am creating a new layer and selecting the artboard where I want everything pasted, but sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't. I am using CS5 on MacBook Pro.
I constantly run into the problem that I have many objects and when I want to drag the selected object to move it around, the object laying in front / or on top of it will be grabbed and moved instead. How do I shortcutwise avoid to pick an unwanted object when I'm about to drag an object ? Is there something like a key to hold, so that Illustrator understands that I want to move the already selected object only ? Since that is a 100 times per day task and I can't always lock and unlock all other layer I'm working on too ... well I could, but that would slow down working 100 times since it's not easy to identify / switch on of each layer in the layer list each time i pick another object ...
