Troubleshooting

Solutions to common installation, rendering, color, performance, and editing problems.

The Controls Do Not Open

Select artwork and click a fill in the Linestra panel, choose Effect → Vexy → Vexy Linestra, or double-click an existing Linestra row in Window → Appearance. If the Effect menu item is absent, quit Illustrator and confirm VexyLinestra.aip is installed in the plug-ins folder for the Illustrator major version you launched. Remove duplicate or older development copies and restart Illustrator.

Illustrator Reports a Plug-in Issue at Startup

Use the current official release with Illustrator 28.7 or newer. Confirm the plug-in is installed for the Illustrator major version you launched. Reinstall after removing older copies. On macOS, replace a quarantined non-notarized test build with the official package rather than bypassing system security.

The Effect Command Is Disabled

Select actual artwork with the Selection tool. An empty layer, guide, isolated anchor, or locked object is not a usable input.

Checking for Updates Does Not Open

Open the Linestra panel menu and choose Check for Updates…. The command requires the installed updater helper, which is included with official releases. If it does not start, reinstall the current official package and restart Illustrator.

The Result Is Too Dark

Increase Spacing, reduce Thickness, or simplify/darken-selectively the source appearance below Linestra. Dense fills at low Spacing can overlap heavily.

The Result Is Too Light

Decrease Spacing, increase Thickness, or improve source contrast. Confirm the source is visible and not mostly transparent.

The Effect Ignores Image Detail

Make sure the selected object's visible appearance contains tonal variation. A flat vector fill produces a mostly uniform signal. Try a photograph or add gradients/effects below Linestra. Very large artwork is analyzed with a 1024-pixel longest-edge cap, so microscopic details are intentionally simplified.

Static Color Does Not Change

Select Static Color, click its color rectangle, and choose the result color in Illustrator's picker. Source fill and stroke are not used as the generated mark color.

Dynamic Color Looks Black or Grayscale

Check that the source appearance actually contains color at the Linestra input stage. Grayscale images produce grayscale sampling. Move color-producing appearance entries below Linestra if they should influence the signal.

Dynamic Contour Produces an Empty or Flat Result

Use a source with clear tonal/color regions, start at default values, and keep Organic low. Increase or decrease Spacing to change the analysis scale. Confirm Dynamic Color is enabled and the source is not a flat transparent object.

Marks End Abruptly at an Edge

Use the current release. Linestra now calculates a transparent sampling margin from the fill and its geometry settings, so marks can taper beyond the source signal before final clipping. If an edge still looks cut off, note the fill, Thickness, Spacing, Organic value, color mode, and source art type; different fills apply different final clipping rules.

Slider Updates Are Slow

Increase Spacing. Complex modes create many primitives, especially on large bounds. Stipple, Dither, Wireframe, Fractal, String Art, and dense ASCII are expected to require more work than Linear.

The plug-in caps source sampling and output elements for safety. If a setting exceeds safe complexity, simplify it instead of repeatedly retrying the same extreme value.

Undo Contains Too Many Steps

Current slider dragging should preview without accumulating one undo per frame and commit one final Vexy Linestra Change on mouse-up. If you see different behavior, note the exact input device and Illustrator version in the report.

Double-Clicking Appearance Does Not Open the Panel

Make sure you double-click the Linestra row itself, such as Vexy Linestra Linear, not Opacity or Contents. You can reselect the object and click a fill in the panel or invoke Effect → Vexy → Vexy Linestra when applying a new instance.

Expand Appearance Is Slow

Dense fills may contain thousands of paths. Save first, increase Spacing in the live effect, and try expansion again. Use an expanded duplicate rather than destroying the only live version.

A Shared Document Cannot Render Linestra

The recipient needs the compatible plug-in. Send an expanded copy for users without Vexy Linestra.

Diagnostic Log

The plug-in records critical support failures to:

~/Library/Logs/VexyLinestra/plugin.log

When contacting support, include:

  • The log file, if it was created
  • Exact Illustrator version
  • Operating system version and computer architecture
  • Fill and all parameter values
  • Static or Dynamic Color
  • Source type: linked raster, embedded raster, path, group, text, and so on
  • A minimal .ai document if it can be shared

Return to Getting Started to verify the plug-in with a simple Linear effect at default settings.