Clipping Masks and FlowJo Graphics

This brief is intended for FJ V8 users who:

- have plots in layouts which they copy/paste into illustrator
- set their plots to not have axes labels or numbers, just ticks, ie..

If you copy/paste a label-less, number-less graph into illustrator, you may notice that it's missing axes ticks:

in flowjo:

in AI:

So what happened there? where did the ticks go? Here's a hint.. select the graph in illustrator with the Selection Tool (Black arrow, keyboard shrtct "V"):

Kind of looks like they're there now, doesn't it. Well in fact they are. However, the Clipping Mask we create only extends as far as the 0 point of the graph, which is a few pixels short of encompassing the ticks. There are two ways to fix this:

1. right- or ctrl- click this chart with the Selection Tool, and ungroup. Right click again and release the mask. Done.

2. in FJ, create an object, like a line whose pen/stroke have been set to white (ie, it won't show when printed). Place this object south-west of the lower-left most object in your layout. This will extend the clipping mask in that direction, and thus, include the ticks so you don't have to deal with it ;)