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On screen, my creation looks fine, but when I outline strokes or create offset strokes, everything is jacked up. I have converted text to outlines, adjusted the resulting outlines, but can't figure out how to get AI CS5.5 to convert to a continuous stroke. Suggestions are most appreciated.

before and after Offset Strokes

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  • Is this the desired effect? i.stack.imgur.com/N62zc.png
    – Welz
    Dec 28, 2017 at 17:59
  • Is your original outline one continuous path? [Which would be one problem. I don't see whatever could have happened to get it breaking so bad as in the /u and /e.]
    – Jongware
    Dec 28, 2017 at 18:02
  • WELZ, thanks for your reply. Your sample is very close to what I was trying to achieve, but there was still some missing offset on the C and E's, in particular. The problem seems to be my inability to get the separate line segments to connect.
    – Jeff Spann-Ly
    Dec 29, 2017 at 23:56

1 Answer 1

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Your outline appears to not be one, single path. But a collection of separate segments. You need to make the outline a single path for offset path to work as you are expecting.

You can actually tell where the path breaks by looking at the results...

enter image description here

The S looks correct because it is the only character which is a single path.

If it's all one, compound, path, then the offset will be as you are expecting:

enter image description here

So you merely need to join the separate segments.

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  • Man my quickly drawn R and C look pretty bad :)
    – Scott
    Dec 28, 2017 at 20:31
  • What you did is exactly what I was trying to do. I started out with text, converted to outlines, squished the text together so it would overlap, selected appropriate paths, then used the scissors tool to cut the paths so the overlap would go away. I'm simply unable to figure out how to get the new paths to join. Sometimes I can select end points, and click 'command J' with success, but often times, I get an error, or what appears to be an end point is an anchor point. CS 5.5
    – Jeff Spann-Ly
    Dec 29, 2017 at 23:50
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    I'm not certain what more I can do to help. You have to join the segments. That may mean zooming and and carefully selecting anchors, or cutting some paths so they can be joined properly to other paths. Or manually tracing the entire outline with the pen tool (which is what I did).
    – Scott
    Dec 30, 2017 at 0:56

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