Your first Illustrator script

Your first Illustrator script

The traditional first project in any programming language is displaying the message “Hello World!” In this example, you create a new Illustrator document, then add a text frame containing this message. Follow these steps:

1. Start any text editor (for example, Notepad).
2. Type the following code:

   Rem Hello World
   Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
   Rem Create a new document and assign it to a variable
   Set documentRef = appRef.Documents.Add
   Rem Create a new text frame item and assign it to a variable
   Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames.Add
   Rem Set the contents and position of the TextFrame
   sampleText.Position = Array(200, 200)
   sampleText.Contents = "Hello World!"

3. Save the file as text-only in a folder of your choice, using the file extension .vbs.
4. To test the script, do one of the following:
   • Double-click the file.
   • Start Illustrator, choose File > Scripts > Other Scripts, and navigate to and run your script file.

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Adding features to “Hello World”

Next, we create a new script that makes changes to the Illustrator document you created with your first script. Our second script demonstrates how to:

• Get the active document.
• Get the width of the active document.
• Resize the text frame to match the document’s width.

If you already closed the Illustrator document, run your first script again to create a new document.

Follow these steps:

1. Copy the following script into your text editor, and save the file:

   Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
   'Get the active document
   Set documentRef = appRef.ActiveDocument
   Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames(1)
   ' Resize the TextFrame item to match the document width
   sampleText.Width = documentRef.Width
   sampleText.Left = 0

2. Run the script.