Operation Manual
90
USING ILLUSTRATOR
Drawing
Last updated 11/8/2011
To increase or decrease the grid cell size, use the grid cell size widget. When you mouse over the grid cell size widget,
the pointer changes to
.
Note: When you increase the grid cell size, the number of grid cells reduce.
Increasing the grid cell size by dragging the grid cell size widget.
Drawing new objects in perspective
To draw objects in perspective, use the line group tools or rectangle group tools while the grid is visible. While using
the rectangle or line group tools, you can switch to the Perspective Selection tool by pressing Cmd (Mac OS) or Ctrl
(Windows).
You can also switch the active plane using the keyboard shortcut 1 (left plane), 2 (horizontal plane), and 3 (right plane)
with these tools selected.
Note: The Flare tool is not supported with Perspective Grid.
When you draw an object in perspective, use Smart Guides to align the object to other objects. The alignment is based
on the perspective geometry of objects. Guides appear as the object approaches the edge or anchor point of other
objects.
You can use numerical values for any of the rectangle or line group tools (other than the Flare tool). You can specify
height and width values for the object in the same way as you would draw in regular mode, but the object is drawn in
perspective in this case. Also, the values represent real world dimensions of the objects.
Note: While drawing in perspective, you can use the regular shortcuts available for drawing objects such as Shift /
Alt+drag (Windows) or Option+drag (Mac OS).
While drawing in perspective, objects can be snapped to grid lines of the active plane. An object snaps to the grid lines
within 1/4th distance of the cell size.
You can enable or disable the Snap to Grid option from View > Perspective Grid > Snap to Grid.This option is enabled
by default.
For a video on drawing artwork in perspective, see www.adobe.com/go/lrvid5211_ai_en.
Attach objects to perspective
If you have already created objects, Illustrator provides the option to attach objects to an active plane on the perspective grid.