Rulers

If you want to work accurately, we need to perfectly align the various objects in your document.

We use rulers and guides.

To show the rulers in your document, click the “View” button in the menu bar and select “Show Rulers” in the drop-down menu.

This shows a horizontal and a vertical ruler.

Depending on what you chose as units when you created the new document, they are displayed in points, inches, centimeters or whatever you have selected.

In the following example, centimeters, but if you wish to change this, right click a ruler and choose another unit from the drop-down menu.

By default, the zero on the horizontal ruler is properly aligned with the drawing area, but never that of the vertical ruler.

To solve this problem, click in the box at the top left and drag the cursor to the upper left corner of the drawing area (1).
This places the origin of both rulers at the top left of the drawing area (2).

To whatever position you may move the artboard with the hand (3), the zero point of both rulers remain at the upper left corner of the drawing area.

Guides

Now that our rulers are set correctly, we must add a number of guides. Otherwise it makes little sense to work with rulers.

As an example I want to place the logo at 5 cm from the top and 5 cm from the left edge of the drawing area. For this, we place a vertical guide and a horizontal guide.

For the horizontal guide, place the cursor in the horizontal ruler (1) and click and drag it into the drawing area to 5 cm in the vertical ruler indicator (2).

Do the same for the vertical ruler. So we place the cursor in the vertical ruler (3) and click and drag it into the drawing area to the 5 cm indicator in the horizontal ruler (4).

The only thing you have to do is to move the logo to the right position.

To do this select the selection tool in the tool bar and click and drag the logo to the desired location. You can also do this with the arrow keys on your keyboard.

One click will move the object one pixel, Shift-click moves the position of the object by 10 pixels.

TIP 1

When you drag a guide from the ruler and you hold the Shift key on your keyboard pressed, the guide will always be positioned at an indicator point in the ruler. For example, the 5cm or 6cm, but never between two indicator points. For example, 5.5 cm.

TIP 2

When you are adding a guide and you hold the Alt key, you will switch from horizontal to the vertical guide. Or vice versa of course.

Tip 3

You even have the possibility of adding guides to an object (1). For example, to draw an oval, you right-click anywhere on the artboard and choose “Make Guides” in the drop-down menu.

Moving Guides

By default, the guides you have drawn, are locked. What this means is that you can not move them.

To unlock, right click anywhere on the artboard and click the option “Lock Guides”.

This will remove the check from this option.

To move the guide, move your cursor over the guide and when “path” appears, click and drag it to the desired position.

FYI: You also have the option of moving a guide made for an object.

To remove the guide, select it and click the Delete button on your keyboard.
To hide all guides, right click anywhere in the document and choose “Hide Guides” in the drop-down menu. Repeat this to display them again.

Different guides for different drawing areas

You also have the option of setting different guides for different drawing areas.

To select this, first select the “Artborad Area”.

Then select the first drawing area where you want to add a guide and click and drag a guide from a ruler in the drawing area.

Return to “normal” mode and you’ll see that each drawing area has its own guides.

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