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Smart Guides



Smart Guides are temporary snap‑to guides that appear when you create or manipulate objects or artboards. They help you align, edit, and transform objects or artboards relative to other objects, artboards, or both by snap-aligning and displaying X, Y location and delta values. You can specify the type of smart guides and feedback that appear (such as measurement labels, object highlighting, or labels) by setting the Smart Guides preferences.

To see a video on using smart guides, see www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4020_ai.

Use Smart Guides

Smart Guides are on by default.

  1. Choose View > Smart Guides to turn guides on or off.
  2. Use Smart Guides in the following ways:

    • When you create an object with the pen or shape tools, use the Smart Guides to position a new object's anchor points relative to an existing object. Or, when you create a new artboard, use Smart Guides to position it relative to another artboard or an object.

    • When you create an object with the pen or shape tools, or when you transform an object, use the smart guides’ construction guides to position anchor points to specific preset angles, such as 45 or 90 degrees. You set these angles in the Smart Guides preferences.

    • When you move an object or artboard, use the Smart Guides to align the selected object or artboard to other objects or artboards. The alignment is based on the geometry of objects and artboards. Guides appear as the object approaches the edge or center point of other objects.

      Note: Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) to use the alignment behavior from Illustrator CS3, which uses the center point or edge of one object or artboard.

    • When you rotate or move an item, use Smart Guides to snap to the last used angle.

    • When you transform an object, Smart Guides automatically appear to assist the transformation.

    You can change when and how Smart Guides appear by setting Smart Guide preferences.

    Note: When Snap To Grid or Pixel Preview is turned on, you cannot use Smart Guides (even if the menu command is selected).

Smart Guide preferences

Choose Edit > Preferences > Smart Guides (Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences > Smart Guides (Mac OS) to set the following preferences:

Color
Specifies the color of the guides.

Alignment Guides
Displays guide lines that are generated along the center and edges of geometric objects, artboard, and bleeds. They are generated when you move objects and when you perform operations such as drawing basic shapes, using Pen tool, and transforming objects.

Anchor/Path Labels
Displays information when paths intersect and when they are centered on an anchor point.

Measurement Labels
Displays information for many tools (such as Drawing tools and Text tools) about the current position the cursor as you position the cursor over an anchor point. While creating, selecting, moving, or transforming objects it displays the x and y delta from the object’s original location. When you press Shift while using a drawing tool, the starting location appears.

Object Highlighting
Highlights the object below the pointer as you drag around it. The highlight color matches the object’s layer color.

Transform Tools
Displays information when you scale, rotate, and shear objects.

Construction Guides
Displays guidelines as you draw new objects. You specify the angles at which you want guidelines drawn from the anchor points of a nearby object. You can set up to six angles. Type an angle in the selected Angles box, select a set of angles from the Angles pop‑up menu, or select a set of angles from the pop‑up menu and change one of the values in the box to customize a set of angles. The preview reflects your settings.

Snapping Tolerance
Specifies the number of points the pointer must be from another object for Smart Guides to take effect.