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• • February 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm #67269
    Kiley

    Member

    I’m using ID CS6 and can’t find a way to custom adjust the height percentage of the end caps for the ‘bar’ stroke style. Its something I do in illustrator and would love to know how its done in InDesign.

    The linked image below shows how the previous editor created three separate line segments to achieve this look, and above is the default height when I chose ‘bar’ from the start and end cap drop-down menus.

    https://i58.tinypic.com/ehzz92.png

  • February 20, 2014 at 6:17 pm #67270
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Yup, we all wish that InDesign had this feature. For arrowheads, especially!
    https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/114445-adobe-indesign-wishlist/suggestions/1937843-custom-stroke-ends-and-stroke-styles

  • February 20, 2014 at 6:45 pm #67271
    Kelly Vaughn

    Participant

    Hi Kiley,
    While you can’t adjust the percentage of the en cap, what you can do is adjust the percentage of the stroke width. Create a custom striped stroke style so that width of the stroke occupies NOT 100%, but the center third or so. When you apply the stroke at let’s say 1 pt, the bar will be the same size it would be at 1pt, but the stroke itself will be 30% or .3 pts. I’m not sure if that’s exactly what you were after, but maybe it will prove useful to you.

    • July 15, 2016 at 11:50 am #86544
      maanemann

      Member

      I made an account just to say thank you, Kelly (even though it’s a while ago that you wrote). I really wish InDesign had the same feature as Illustrator, as a matter of fact they should be merged into one application in my opinion, but for now that trick you told about is really neat.

      If someone doesn’t understand the explanation, like Kiley, here’s a step-by-step guide:
      1) Go to the stroke panel
      2) Open the flyout menu (upper right corner) and select “Stroke Styles…”
      3) Press new
      4) In the window that opens, under “Type” select “Stripe”
      5) Now, in the graphical representation of the stroke in the middle you get a vertical ruler with 4 pointers that you can pull along the ruler. There might be more, depending on how many stripes the stroke has. Either way, pull them all into the middle, so they meet/cross over each other, and they will merge together into one stripe. You are now left with only 2 pointers.
      6) If you e.g. put those 2 pointers on 25% and 75% the stripe will cover half of the available area, and this will mean that the stroke will be half as wide as normal. You can adjust this into what fits your needs.
      7) Give your new stroke style a name. I will recommend naming it James.
      8) Press OK and again OK in the other window, select your already created stroke or make a new one, and then in the stroke panel, under type, your new stroke style, James will appear in the bottom. Select him, and the stroke end/start you specify will be twice as big as the stroke weight (if you followed my 25% + 74% example).

      Writing this was sort of a procrastination from working on the project, for which I needed this trick, so I really hope that it at least helped someone.

  • February 21, 2014 at 10:48 am #67280
    Kiley

    Member

    Hi Kelly,

    I don’t understand what dialog box or menu you finding custom stroke style percentages.. Here’s how I would do this in Illustrator CS6 <https://i57.tinypic.com/11t1ybn.png&gt;.

    After discovering David’s post here <https://creativepro.com/making-custom-arrowheads.php&gt;, I tried the Type on a Path tool, as shown here <https://i60.tinypic.com/6htenq.png&gt; with a ton of adjustments to the character style to achieve the same look as the three segment solution the previous editor used.. It is really not at all more helpful since I still have to adjust the Type on a Path range when unscaled, same as direct selecting the three-segment line, as shown here <https://i59.tinypic.com/4r9941.png&gt;..

    Has this feature been updated in CC?

  • February 24, 2014 at 11:49 am #67300
    Kelly Vaughn

    Participant

    Hi Kiley,

    You can find stroke styles under the Stoke Panel flyout menu.

    Unfortunately, there is not exactly what you’re looking ofr in InDesign. But I did find that by changing the stroke cap type from Butt cap to Projecting cap, that changes the height of the bars on the end. Perhaps that will be sufficient.

    Do both end of the line need to be the same height? Are you looking to make the bars on the end shorter or taller than the default?

    Perhaps you should consider using two different paths with different appearance. One path for the end caps and a second path for the stroke body. With the Magneto Paths plugin, they will stick together and act as a single object when you move or resize them. I wrote about this concept here: https://creativepro.com/beauty-stacked-strokes.php

    And sadly, no this feature has not been updated in CC. But the Rorohiko plugin can sure helps in situations like this.

  • October 30, 2016 at 5:13 pm #89433
    Kriss Laber

    Member

    The stroke style technique is interesting, but the opposite of what I need.I think the arrowheads are excessively large.

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