I need help expanding objects filled with patterns in Adobe Illustrator CS3. I choose Object > Expand (because “Expand Appearance” is grayed out). The resultant pattern becomes a hairline stroke: 
Hmmm…that is interesting. I suppose a workaround would be to re-select the hairlines after the Expand and change the stroke back. You could also select a hairline flower and look in your Appearance palette to see if that might give you any clues as to why the stroke gets reduced. Without AI on this PC at the moment I can’t currently duplicate the problem and be of more help right now.
post up a example ai file with the pattern. I’ll check it out.
yeah post the file; I am thinking the hairline could be the fact that the file was made a different way… without lines and the programs is compensating for the option…
Here is the source file: [U]www.designaxe.com/storage/help.zip
[/U][file size : 889kb]
Edit: If I expand the pattern before making the pattern, then all is well. But I kind of wasted like an hour doing that since I had a lot of different textures. Any faster way to expand without having to redefine the patterns?
Can’t see a way around it, funny thought I actually got it working, and by working i mean when i extract a new shape with the pattern applied it asked to extract fill and stroke and the stroke would stay the same width but I have no idea what I made it work, lol… and when i reopened your file i couldnt repeat the result!! :sigh:
But like you said I think patterns work best when the graphics being made into a pattern/shape are extracted as one whole raw vector before hand.
When expanding, “stroke” is grayed out.
Right, because the pattern itself is only being applied as a fill in your case. If you were to create your design using the pattern as a stroke and no fill then “fill” would be grayed out when trying to expand.
^^ exactly, it was grayed out, but some how I got both fill and stroke working options open. but besides that, the pattern is the issue not your method of extraction. all you have to simply do is apply the same amount of stroke back on the shape once it’s extracted or extract the shape before creating the pattern swatch… for the time being that will work for you until someone finds a solution.
object>flatten transparency (vectors to 100%)
works most of the time
the link doesn’t work
