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About this lesson

Show how to create dotted lines or dashes from a stroked path.

Quick reference

Broken Lines and Dashes

Show how to create dotted lines or dashes from a stroked path.

When to use

You can use dashes and broken lines to create a greater variety of lines or to make lines that can be used as borders in your designs.

Instructions

  • Open the Broken Lines and Dashes - Exercise.ai file and then switch to your Pen Tool (P).
  • With a black stroke and no fill color, create four lines on your artboard - these can be straight or curved lines.
  • Select your first line and open the Stroke Panel from the right side of the interface.
  • Check off the option to create a dashed line and experiment with different dash and gap values to see how it affects the line.
  • To create a dotted line you can enter values such as dash 0 and gap 10 repeated for each field. (Make sure you also have a rounded cap and corner selected)
  • Select your second line and try adding an arrowhead to both sides. 
  • You can modify the scale of the arrowheads to make them the same, or you can unlink the start and end arrowheads to change them independently of one another.
  • Select your next line and try modifying the profile of the line to see what the different options look like.
  • Select your forth line and change the profile before selecting the Width Tool (Shift+W) to modify the line further.

Hints

  • If you were creating an invitation or any kind of layout design, modifying your strokes could be a very easy and quick way to customize lines that can be used as borders or decorative elements.
  • You can combine dashed lines with other tools such as the Rotate Tool in order to create an even greater variety of shapes.
  • Changing the weight of a line once it has parameters set for the dashes will change the appearance and can make things appear like they are closer together. In order to compensate for this you may need to increase the values in the gap settings.
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  • 00:04 Now before we move on I just wanted to take a second to go into one
  • 00:08 of the topics that I was showing you guys briefly in the previous section, and
  • 00:12 that is how to use a path with a dashed or a broken line.
  • 00:16 Now I'm just going to create a quick line here with my pen tool, and then I'm going
  • 00:19 to increase the weight of it using the Stroke panel over here on the side.
  • 00:24 But once we have that, I'm going to come and check off the Dashed Line option.
  • 00:28 And just like I was showing you guys, before,
  • 00:30 you have some control over things like the dash and the gap.
  • 00:34 Now, if I wanted to make more variety of lines, I could do that in
  • 00:39 here just by making every other setting, or every other number the same.
  • 00:44 So as I do this you can kind of see the line changing each time.
  • 00:48 Since I wanted a dash and then a gap of 5, 1 and 5, and 1 and 5.
  • 00:55 You see it kinda creates this nice stroke effect here, this nice vertical line.
  • 01:05 All right, and again, by changing some of these values,
  • 01:08 you can see that you're able to get quite a bit of variety, right?
  • 01:13 So these values don't have to match up, you can also do things like 6 and
  • 01:18 then 12, and then 4, and then 16.
  • 01:21 And you'll get a lot more random looking lines,
  • 01:24 which can be kind of a useful thing too in certain instances.
  • 01:33 All right, and I can also check off these options here to give myself a rounded cap.
  • 01:41 Right, to see what other kinds of things we can make.
  • 01:48 So if for example I just wanted to create a dotted line, I could do that pretty
  • 01:53 easily here by just making the dash 0, with a larger gap in between.
  • 01:58 And then as I increase the weight, I will also need to increase the gap,
  • 02:04 in order to still see those individual dots like this.
  • 02:12 Okay, so that's an easy way to create kind of a doted line too, all right?
  • 02:17 And then I also have these options under here, for arrows and
  • 02:22 things like that which,
  • 02:23 you might not be able to tell right away because I have a dashed line selected.
  • 02:28 But if I uncheck the dash line, I could easily come in here and
  • 02:31 just add some arrow heads, different kinds of fronts and backs of the arrows.
  • 02:39 I can reverse it to have it go the other way and swap them, and
  • 02:42 also have the ability to change the scale.
  • 02:47 Okay, and I can align them, place the arrow tip at the end of the path, or
  • 02:51 I can extend the arrow tip beyond the end of the path,
  • 02:54 depending on what kind of look you're going for.
  • 02:56 All right, so you can do some cool stuff there.
  • 02:59 If I wanted to actually control just one of these parameters but not both of them.
  • 03:06 I can do that as well, see how I just reduced the size of the tail, but
  • 03:09 not the actual arrowhead?
  • 03:12 Okay, so if I wanted to reduce the size of the arrowhead, but not the tail,
  • 03:15 I would change that first setting in here.
  • 03:19 Okay, but you can link them to have them both stay the same.
  • 03:24 All right and that's what this little link does down here, okay?
  • 03:28 And then as for the profile,
  • 03:29 this is basically what's going to change the main line here that you have selected.
  • 03:34 So, again if I create another line, you guys can see this a little bit better,
  • 03:40 but there's all different kinds of shapes that you an use here for your lines.
  • 03:43 All right, Shift+W, and then I can maybe extend the cap, the end of the line.
  • 03:50 All right, you can do a lot of pretty cool stuff with this.
  • 03:55 All right, so just play around with the strokes a little bit more.
  • 03:58 Take a look at some of these different profile settings that you can use for
  • 04:01 your lines.
  • 04:02 And also feel free to experiment with the different types of lines that you can use.
  • 04:06 Getting the dashed or broken lines, adding a cap to it or
  • 04:10 removing a cap from the end.
  • 04:14 And just, once you guys start to become more familiar with this panel and
  • 04:18 all of the options that you can use to customize your lines, it'll start to open
  • 04:23 up some of the possibilities for the kinds of things that you're able to create.

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