How do I reduce the thickness of 100+ icons in Adobe Illustrator?

Question

First time poster here.

Just to give some context, I have to reduce the size, thickness, and change the color of 100+ different weather icons for a project. Batch resize and change color works fine, but I'm having trouble making these icons thinner.

Top screenshot: how the original, unedited SVGs look in Illustrator. Bottom screenshot is how it looks when I apply the offset path of -3px. No difference, right? (I selected all the objects within the layer so you can see their strokes)

I searched online and only found one solution so far, which is to use "offset path" and enter a negative value, in this case, I entered -3px. I did this, but as you can see, a compound path (the thinner icon) would instantly be created, while the original icon is left untouched.

Now, here's how it looks it when I hide the original icon layer (sun):

The problem I'm facing is that I tried recording all of these steps and Illustrator can't record the action of hiding the icon with regular thickness.

That being said, how can I reduce the thickness of 100+ of these icons? Is there a way to record the action of hiding/deleting the original image after applying -3px offset path? Is there a way to make these icons thinner without creating an additional compound path?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Offset Path always leaves the orignial unaffected and adds the transformed path as a copy on top. You can take advantage of the fact that the transformed path that is generated is selected by default and the original isn't.

Assuming your icon is the only thing in the file and you want to offset everything, your action should be set up like this:

1. Select All (cmd+A)
2. Offset Path (Object → Path → Offset Path...)
3. Cut (cmd+X)
4. Select All (cmd+A)
5. Clear (Backspace/Del)
6. Paste in Place (cmd+SHIFT+V)

Answer 2

Offset paths chosen from the Object menu always keeps the original. But its easier if you use the offset in Effect Menu. As it does a live override. So all you really need is:

1. Select All (ctrl/cmd+a)
2. Apply a graphics style with offset path effect (Effect → Path → Offset Path...)

Also original stays if you save out an AI. The second benefit of the effect is that you can record the graphics style and do a even more complex transform with a shorter recording that is easier to change to do other things.

On the downside is that you need to save this effect in a effect library in order to use this on a new file. But that is not much of a setup.