Welcome to Hot Door CORE - a cross-platform API used to generate plug-ins for Adobe® Illustrator® 2021-2024.

CORE can be used as a direct replacement for the Illustrator® SDK, or it can also be used in conjunction with the Illustrator® SDK if some desired features are not included in CORE.

CORE was created as a way to support the plug-in market while simultaneously contributing to the monumental reconstruction of Hot Door's flagship product, CADtools. Hot Door CADtools was first introduced in 1997, transforming Adobe® Illustrator® into a complete CAD environment for professional design. CADtools has been upgraded with every release of Adobe® Illustrator®, but Illustrator® CS6 introduced new roadblocks. Adobe® dropped support for its useful cross-platform Adobe Dialog Manager™ which allowed developers to easily create plug-ins for both Mac and Windows. In turn, many independent developers stopped writing plug-ins because it became too difficult to support cross-platform development. When Adobe officially announced that developers would be responsible for their own user interface code, Hot Door faced even more obstacles.

Hot Door realized that its platform UI code could be separated from the CADtools code, allowing it to be shared with other developers who were struggling with the new constraints. Hot Door CORE was born – a well-documented, organized resource for creating plug-in solutions for the industry-standard vector application.

To best support the Illustrator® plug-in developer market, CORE is distributed for free and offers compatibility back to Illustrator® 2021. While technical support for this resource cannot be free, the Getting Started, Documentation and Forum pages should help any developer get off to a running start. Hot Door development services are available for hire as appropriate.

Try out Hot Door CORE and let us know what you think in the forum at hotdoorcore.com!