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• • November 11, 2010 at 12:36 pm #57694
    letterwoman

    Member

    In InDesign CS5 I was wondering if there's any way to remove the rule around a box without changing the size of a box. For example, when I make a box that's filled with a color and has a rule or stroke around it, then decide to remove the stroke later on, the box size changes to a smaller size because the stroke is gone. I guess it factors in the weight of the stroke and removes that amount from the size of the box. Illustrator doesn't do this, so I thought maybe there was a setting I could change to keep this from happening in InDesign.

    Conversely, when I make a box that's just filled with a color with no stroke and then add a stroke later, the box size changes to a larger size. I don't want that to happen either. Can anyone help me? I don't remember this ever happening in CS3.

  • November 11, 2010 at 2:31 pm #57697
    erickp

    Member

    If the box is a solid color then you can just make the stroke the same color BUT I doubt that's the case, so you basically can't. At least from what I know. If there is a way, I'd love to hear it. There is a way in Illustrator by outlining path but I haven't seen that feature in ID.

    In the future, just make sure your strokes are set to “Align Inside”, then you won't have that issue.

    ~e

  • November 12, 2010 at 2:36 am #57700
    Gfx-Dzine

    Member

    Hi letterwoman,

    Here I checked both Indesign (CS5) and Illustrator (CS5) and here their default behaviour is the same – they both add the stroke Center Aligned by default.

    In effect the 'box becomes smaller' when you set the stroke to none (no colour actually).

    So, like erickp said, only if you align your stroke to inside and later on set it to none you will see no difference in size.

    Mike.

  • November 12, 2010 at 7:39 am #57706
    Rhiannon Miller

    Member

    Further to this, you can always set your stroke to inside as part of the object style.

    Also, not quite what you were asking for, but you can choose whether InDesign factors in the stroke when you're changing the size of an object. With the Select tool active, click on the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of your application bar and you should see an option 'Dimensions include stroke weight'. If this is checked, then when you type, say, '10mm' into the height box, that 10mm will include the size of the stroke; if it's unchecked, then your object will resize to 10mm plus the stroke weight.

  • November 12, 2010 at 7:59 am #57707
    letterwoman

    Member

    Thanks everyone for all the different suggestions! I really appreciate it. I hope they can fix this in the next version of InDesign. I just find it really annoying that you can do some things in Illustrator and can't do them in InDesign.

  • November 12, 2010 at 8:51 pm #57722
    erickp

    Member

    Another work around would be Scale up your image. 1 point equals .466%. So if you have a 10pt. stroke and it's aligned to center then you would have to scale up your box 5pt. which equals 2.33%. If the stroke is aligned on the outside then you would do the full 10pt (4.66%). The other thing you need to be aware of is the boxes reference point, so when you scale up, it will scale to place. Again, it's not an ideal solution but it works.

  • November 13, 2010 at 1:30 pm #57725
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    1 point equals .466%

    Where'd you get that from? Points are real measurement units (other than, say, hand's widths or pixels). Your conversion only works if the entire object is exactly 1/0.00466 = 214.6 points wide. Only then is 0.466% of that amount exactly 1 point.

    I'd set the measurement to points, the proxy to center, then add the stroke width to both height and width.

  • November 15, 2010 at 11:04 am #57741
    erickp

    Member

    @Jongware:

    Yes, they are real measurements BUT I'm getting that .466% from playing around with percentages after removing a stroke and resizing the object so it falls exactly where the outer part of the stroke originally was. The “object” in this case is irrelevant. It's about the stroke size not dimensions, even though (yes) you are increasing the dimensions but it's just to occupy the space left by the stroke. Again, it's an approximation and not a literal point to percentage ratio. It got me to what I needed.

  • November 15, 2010 at 6:58 pm #57755
    Alan Gilbertson

    Participant

    letterwoman said:

    … when I make a box that's filled with a color and has a rule or stroke around it, then decide to remove the stroke later on, the box size changes to a smaller size because the stroke is gone.

    ---

    The box doesn't actually change size. If the stroke is at its default of “centered” on the frame edge (which is just a path), or if it is outside, the appearance will shrink (same as in Illustrator) when you remove the stroke. The frame itself is unaffected. If you set the stroke to the inside of the frame, the apparent size remains the same when you remove the stroke. I can't see any difference between the IA and ID handling of this. IA doesn't increase the size of a shape to occupy the area vacated by a stroke that was centered or outside the shape path.

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