Default Graphic Styles for Actions

[troutoil]

Hi, I need to do around 600 extrusions of predrawn flat shapes. The extrude & bevel effect works just fine, but isn't picked up when I record an action. So, I've made a graphic style to apply to each shape, but the actions only seem to be able to get at the default graphic style library.

I've changed my startup files to include the Graphic Styles, and overwritten the Default_RGB and Default_CMYK Graphic Style Libraries, but still no luck. The styles are there when I create a new document, but not when I open an existing file. I've tried making a seperate library Persistant, but the actions still don't seem to find it.

If anyone has any ideas, that'd be great. I'm familiar with Applescript, but haven't really done any scripting inside Illustrator except through the actions pallete, so if I need to dip into Applescript, thats fine.

Thanks a ton for your help.

Brennan
Kalamazoo, MI

[davecross]

Just thinking out loud, but what if you recorded pasting a graphic that contained the style and then deleted it - that would add the style to an exisiting document. Needless to say, I haven't tried this out, just thought I'd throw out an idea.

[G4pj]

Sometimes, based on how the paths are put down, there are overrides on groups that have to be cleared before a style can be applied. If clearing the overrides proves to be challenging, and there are multiple groups in the document, move each group to it's own layer, ungroup, then apply the style.

Without seeing a sample of the document, it's hard to say.

pj

[nutella]

By mentioning "Applescript" that would mean yuo are on the Mac. That sucks.

If you have a Wacom pen (doesn't matter which one), you can add a whole series of keystrokes to the Wacom's popup menu as a batch script - so to speak. Keystrokes are great because you can simulate pretty much any menu, navigation, or action (don't mean the "action palette") that you generally do in AI. For example you can create a keyboard script just to open and adjust various settings in the Preferences dialog, which we know is not scriptable, or not Action recordable. However, using the Wacom's popup menu keystrokes it is possible quite easily. Then you can assign the script to a key (again, through Wacom's popup menu control), or one of the the pen's button.

All this possible, because in Windows, you can access pretty much any menu and it's menu item via keyboard navigation. On the Mac, however, it is not, because you can only access menu items that have command/apple key equivalents.

Many people don't know or simply forget about this powerful feature of the Wacom pens.

Another reason to use a PC (...not that I love it that much...)!