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One of the foremost step while making Paths which you are going to enhance further using Width Tool, is to make sure that the Stroke is aligned to the \u201cCenter\u201d. The feature is disabled when the stroke is aligned to \u201cInside\u201d or \u201cOutside\u201d. For this, go over the Control Panel. Just beside \u2018Fill Color\u2019, click the underlined word \u2018Stroke\u2019 and you will find three options in Align Stroke. For aligning the stroke in the center, click the first option and you are good to go. This gets avoided by default when the path is open. This way you will find that the Width Tool is enabled now if it wasn\u2019t working before in case the stroke was aligned other than centrally. The primary reason for this is to optimize the functionality of the tool. All the features designed for Width Tool can give best results when the stroke is centrally aligned. This helps a great deal with the main function of the Width Tool i.e. symmetry. The standard stroke can be converted into any desired shape using Width Tool.<\/p>\n

2. Convert Brush Definition to \u201cBasic\u201d<\/h2>\n

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While using the Brush tool in Illustrator, make sure to convert the Brush Definition to \u201cBasic\u201d. When you first \u201cdraw the path\u201d<\/strong>, select the \u201cBasic\u201d option in Brush Panel (F5). The Basic option in Brush Panel isn\u2019t even a brush but rather means to remove brush strokes for the selected paths and convert it to just a standard path. This will finally enable the Width Tool. When you already click the Basic and then draw, the default calligraphy brush gets applied to your path, which is devoid of any variant effects. The idea is, you don\u2019t need Brush tool when you have Width Tool and vice versa, which brings us to our next checkpoint.<\/p>\n