Using the Extrude/Bevel 3D option in Illustrator

I have never EVER played with the 3D option in Adobe Illustrator – the main reason is because I have an amazing 3D art guy at my fingertips for whenever I need a realistic soda can, or a perfume bottle. But I was designing charts and graphs – hardly something a 3D genius wants to deal with, and something I can not make right in my mind, spending hundreds of dollars to have someone else design. So I jumped in head first.

Thanks to smashing mag for some amazing 3D tutorials, I was able to figure most of it out. You can check out these tutorials here: Smashing Magazine’s 50 Excellent 3D tutorials

As great as these tutorials are, I still ran into issues. My first issue was not really with the 3D tool, but the Illustrator graph tool. This tool is pretty great. It basically is a mini excel spread sheet inside of illustrator. You open it, set the type of graph that you want (pie, bar, scatter) and then input your data in the excel-like grid. WONDERFUL, i thought. Since I was redesigning a graph that was created in illustrator, I thought I was golden. Not So.

Unfortunately, I never found an explanation to this issue, but any number over 900,000,000 threw this error at me:

Graph data value is out of range

I guess that means that the value was too high, and I could not find any way to change this! So if you know any way to change the max value for the Illustrator Graph tool, please let me know.

So back to the 3D thing. I was able to just create my own little bars with the rectangle too. Just as if you were making a flat bar graph. Then you have to group all of them together, choose the EFFECT -> 3D -> EXTRUDE/BEVEL  There you will set your angles or move the little cube to get the look you want. The reason you have to group the bars is because grouping seems to keep all of the items on the same plane. If you do not group them, they seem to move all around and look like they are set up on steps above each other. Try it and you will see.

The key here is after you add your 3D effect go to OBJECT -> EXPAND This is the trick! When you “expand” anything, it created outlines for all of the little bits that make up the 3D graphic. Its a great little tool to use when you want to customize little bits of your 3D element!

Once you exand your item, you can select the different faces of the rectangle individually (you may have to “ungroup” a few times) and add gradients! That’s about it. From there, you can work with any one of those tutorials I linked you to, and play around!

I just wanted to get this post out there simply because the info was not out there. I know, some of the tutorials to tell you to expand, but not all of them, and if you have your 3D rectange sitting in front of you, and all you can see is a flat rectangle you drew and some fancy 3D thing over it, you can get rather frustrated.

Let me know if this helped you! I would love to see what created using this tutorial, or any of the ones linked to at smashing magazine

This is some text prior to the author information. You can change this text from the admin section of WP-Gravatar  Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago. Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade. I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!! Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this author