Snapping

Snapping simplifies the positioning of new and existing objects by 'magnetizing' moved or resized objects to other objects or document elements.

Snapping

Snapping causes images, brush strokes, lines, shapes, and selection areas to align to nearby grid lines, guides, margins, artboards or spreads, or any combination of these. You can also snap to object bounding boxes, key points on shapes, and to an object's geometry. Text can also snap to the baseline of other text (the first line only for text frames) and artistic text objects can snap to the height of previously created artistic text.

To help understand snapping behavior, colored dynamic guides and target nodes display when you snap to objects. The colors used are:

Snapping options

The range of snapping options.

Snapping candidates

Snapping candidates are page objects which are available for you to snap to. You can specify which objects are used in the snap, and eliminate the ones you are not interested in. Alternatively, you can construct your document in a more hierarchical way by using Immediate layers. You can set how candidates are created using the following settings:

Snapping To activate/deactivate snapping:
To temporarily override snapping:
To exclude an object from being a snapping candidate:

A symbol, Layers Effects, appears on the layer entry to indicate this exclusion.

Snapping presets

A powerful and comprehensive set of snapping options are available to you. To make snapping setup quick and easy, one of several snapping presets can be chosen which group recommended snapping options according to how you plan to work (e.g., for UI design, curve drawing, etc.).

Snapping To select a snapping preset:
  1. Click the Snapping option's arrow.
  2. From the Preset pop-up menu, select a preset.
Snapping To customize a snapping preset:
  1. Click the Snapping option's arrow.
  2. Select a preset on which to base your new snapping options.
  3. Check individual options on/off to override the current preset's options.

The options will be in effect immediately.

Presets menu To save as a custom preset for future use:
  1. Click the button adjacent to the Presets pop-up menu.
  2. Select Create preset.

The custom preset is in effect immediately.

Snapping options

Individual snapping options can be switched on or off to suit your needs, drawing style, and the project you are working on. The preset that you initially adopted will be customized in the process.

The following options are available from the pop-up dialog:

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