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Chapter 7. Organizing Your Illustrations

In This Chapter

• Using your 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 all the neat special effects in Illustrator, but if you don't have 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 you accurately place objects in your illustration sounds pretty 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

You can change the rulers' increments to the measurement system that you prefer in the following ways:

• Create a new document and select your preferred measurement units 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

  

  Warning

  Be very careful with the Preferences dialog box. Change ruler units only by using the General tab of the Preferences dialog box. If you change the units of measurement in the Stroke and Type tabs, you can end up with 12-inch type instead ...