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Chapter 3. Using the Selection Tools

In This Chapter

• Knowing the anchor points, bounding boxes, and selection tools

• Working with a selection

• Grouping and ungrouping selections

• Constraining movement and cloning objects

If someone has been coaching you in using Adobe Illustrator, you may have heard the old line "You have to select it to affect it." It means that if you want to apply a change to an object in Illustrator, you must have that object selected or else Illustrator doesn't know what to change. You sit there repeatedly clicking a color swatch and nothing happens. Although making selections may sound simple, it can become tricky when you're working on complicated artwork.

Getting to Know the Selection Tools

Before delving into the world of selecting objects in Illustrator, you must know what the selection tools are. In this section, we take you on a quick tour of the anchor points (integral to the world of selections), the bounding box, and, of course, the selection tools. (Yes, Illustrator has several selection tools.)

Anchor points

To understand selections, you must first understand how Illustrator works with anchor points, which act like handles and can be individually selected and moved to other locations. You essentially use the anchor points to drag objects or parts of objects around the workspace. After you place anchor points on an object, you can create strokes or paths from the anchor points.

You can select several anchor points at the same time, as shown in Figure 3-1, or ...