Here is another great Illustrator script from John Wundes. It’s called Distribute Stacked Objects and it does pretty much what it says, it will distribute and center all selected objects. The object’s position is determined by it’s staking order in the Layers panel with the top object always placed first. You can also define a padding value when prompted. Pretty handy for importing messy files into Illustrator.
Did you know you can adjust the X and Y axes in Illustrator? Chose Preferences > General > Constrain Angle. The value you enter will affect all tools and modifier keys in Illustrator. This can be great for creating isometric objects or working on a project that requires alignment to objects at certain angles. Do you change your Constrain Angle much? If you do, what do you use it for?
When I think about the features I use most in Illustrator I was kind of surprised that one of the top functions was Illustrator’s Split Into Grid. I only use it for a couple specific things, but I do these things all the time. If you are not using the Split Into Grid feature or don’t know much about it, I think you will like these tips. Let me know if you use the Split Into Grid for anything else.
I’m always needing to batch transform objects when I’m working in Illustrator. For example, I have a set of icons and each icon needs to be set with new dimensions. Currently within Illustrator, there is no wash way to do this. The best way I’ve found is to record an Action and play it on each icon. That’s until John Wunders released his Set ALL the Things Illustrator script!
I create a bunch of user defined libraries with custom elements for client projects, for sale on Vector Mill, and for tutorials on Vectips. There are so many elements that my user defined folders are hard to traverse. Did you know that Illustrator supports subfolder file structures in it’s user defined libraries? This makes organizing all my custom libraries a lot easier!
I use a bunch of different scripts in Illustrator, but sometimes it’s a little cumbersome to trigger one. Thankfully there is a pretty cool free extension called Script Bay that makes using scripts a lot easier! I tweeted about this extension from a post by John Wundes, but it’s worth mentioning to those who don’t follow Vectips on Twitter.
This post is like a quick tip, but it focuses on helpful Illustrator features. Did you know Illustrator can convert Freehand multi-page documents into multiple artboards? Pretty handy if you are a Freehand user moving to Illustrator or opening old Freehand files. Anyone even still using Freehand?
