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Chapter 7. Organizing Your Illustrations

In This Chapter

• Using rulers

• Using ruler and custom guides

• Working with the Transform panel for placement

• Changing ruler origin

• Rearranging, hiding, and locking objects

• Masking objects

You can know about all the neat special effects in Illustrator, but if you have no strong organization skills, you can become exasperated when things just don't work as you expect them to. In this chapter, we focus on a few organizational tricks of the trade.

Setting Ruler Increments

Using rulers to help accurately place objects in an illustration sounds simple (and it is), but not knowing how to effectively use the rulers in Illustrator can drive you over the edge.

To view rulers in Illustrator, choose View

To change the ruler increment to the measurement system you prefer, use one of these methods:

• Create a new document and select a measurement unit in the New Document dialog box.

• Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) the horizontal or vertical ruler and pick a measurement increment.

• Choose Edit

  

Note

Change the ruler unit only by using the General drop-down list in the Preferences dialog box. If you change the measurement unit on the Stroke and Type tabs, you can end up with 12-inch type rather than that dainty 12-point type you were expecting.

Note

Setting general preferences ...