Aligning "things" in Illustrator

[ProlixArgon]

Hello, I am a trying to learn to use Illustrator and one question I can't seem to find an answere to is how to align things between two points, say for instance rulers.I was hopping there was some way to do this, aside from manually on a calculator. Is there some way to display the X and Y coordinates of objects, text, or what ever else, say for instance the way it is in Corel Draw?

Oh, another question, also is there a way to set the zoom in, zoom out functionto the mouse scroll wheel?

Thanks,


By the way, I'm using Adobe Illustrator CS.

Post Edited (ProlixArgon) : 2/24/2005 9:02:48 PM GMT

[Drawing a Blank]

You can get the X and Y coordinates in the Info window. Just go to Window>Info.


blah blah blah blah blah blah

[BOSCOW]

Your align pallete
or path then average

[ProlixArgon]

Your align pallete
or path then averageI'm not following you. I get the first part, I think. But the align pallet isn't but so helpful becouse it only uses the page for aligning. If I want to center something between two other objects it's useless. I unless there's something I don't know...

[ProlixArgon]

Also is there a way to make your text change as you cicle through the fonts instead of having to cicle through, hit enter, judge wether you like it better or not, click again and cicle though more. I don't know the fonts well enough yet to go by just their names.

[BOSCOW]

start gouping objects together and then play around with what you want, if you have all seperate objects they will all go off of each other

[uncle carbunkle]

ProlixArgon said...
...unless there's something I don't know...

you are missing something.

open up the align palette (window>align)
click the little arrow at the top right of that palette > show options

click all of the objects that you want to align and play around with the two new buttons that you should now have - you should be able to distribute spacing both horizontally and vertically.

::Whap'pen?::</font>

Post Edited (uncle carbunkle) : 2/25/2005 1:01:56 AM GMT

[MikeTheVike]

Click on one object, and make note of the X/Y coordinates in the 'Transform' tab. The clcik o nthe other object and change the X/Y coordinates to the same as the first object.

After reading your post again, I'm not sure my help is what you were asking...oh well, I tried.

[Broacher]

I bet she really misses the single key alignments of CorelDraw. Select two objects- T for Top, B for bottom, L, R, E, C. Quite the timesaving shortcut. It still has an alignment/distribute pallete too, with with additional keyboard shortcut support. The position and other transform readouts appear in the context top tool bar when you select an object, ready for editing directly--like AI's transform palette. Also like AI, you enter simple formulas to or as a replacement for the value there, freely interchanging units if you like. A slight edge on AI is that Draw allows you to enter more than one math term to a numerical input calculation.

By default, CDraw doesn't transform patterned fills-- but it's a once-only customization of dragging that button onto the default select/transform bar to gain this feature permanently. (Or you can just use the interactive tiling tool's transform handles if you're adjusting things.)

There's also Draw's Transform docker, where most of the same commands are duplicated, with the addition of a switch to enter 'relative' co-ordinates instead of absolutes, and a button to apply the transforms to a duplicate instead of the selected object.

Then there's the dynamic guides which make object against object and object critical alignment divisions, as easy as dragging. Or you can customize the eyedropper to copy and paste one object's position to another's...

And people wonder why I still like working in CorelDraw.

[Allen Harkleroad]

I love CorelDraw been using it since version 1 on Windows 3.x. I myself am trying to sharpen my illustrator skills though kind of nice to work with both.



Allen Harkleroad
'I didn't do it... You didn't see me... You can't prove a thing...'

[ProlixArgon]

Hey, I've finally got it. No, it didn't "take" me this long to figure it out. I've only now had the time to think about it.





Thanks for allyour help.

[Bear]

just to add to this, if you select multiple objects, then single click one object within that selection, when you click your align (T, B, L, R etc.) it aligns to the object you clicked within your selection of objects

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