Shapes - Control Placement

Quick reference

• 00:04 All right, this lesson is a geometric exercise.
• 00:07 As you can see on the left hand panel, I've got a picture of a butterfly.
• 00:11 And then all the pieces for that butterfly that you are going to get to put together,
• 00:15 just download this project file from the course and start working on it.
• 00:19 This is a fun exercise because what you're going to learn is how to use
• 00:22 all the tools that I've listed here on the left to put those pieces together.
• 00:26 So our first step is to put some guides on the screen so
• 00:29 we can actually see where the guides are located.
• 00:31 So on the View ribbon we're going to click guides.
• 00:34 And as you can see, this blue line showed up, that is my margin guide.
• 00:37 I can keep it or leave it.
• 00:39 Right now I'm not really working with text,
• 00:41 I'm going to get rid of that margin guide.
• 00:43 How about boundaries, let's put the boundaries on there.
• 00:45 Well, that just put boxes around all my text boxes,
• 00:49 not so much on the actual shapes.
• 00:52 So I think I'm going to get rid of the boundaries as well but
• 00:54 you need to know they are there.
• 00:55 What I am going to use is the page design.
• 00:58 When I click on page design we have an entire option that says guides.
• 01:01 And now I can scroll down and choose any one of these guides.
• 01:04 And I am going to go ahead and choose this one right here.
• 01:07 And you're going to see a grid splashed on the back of my page.
• 01:10 Now this grid will not print but it will absolutely help you align things.
• 01:14 So watch, I'm going to smoothly move this box over to the right.
• 01:18 And I wish you could feel my mouse as I'm moving it because it
• 01:21 is pausing right there and then I put push through it.
• 01:24 So when it hits a guide, it does temporarily stop just for
• 01:27 a moment, just to kind of give you that option to let go.
• 01:30 But then you can push through it.
• 01:32 So that's going to happen as we start moving these pieces and
• 01:35 parts into the shape of the butterfly.
• 01:37 All right another thing that's fun to use is a straight edge.
• 01:40 Literally a straight edge.
• 01:41 And on your example you can click and drag this over.
• 01:44 A straight edge is simply a straight line.
• 01:46 I got that by hitting insert > shapes.
• 01:48 I chose a line and I came out here and I drew the line.
• 01:52 And if you click and drag with your shift key you'll draw an exactly straight line.
• 01:57 Then, of course, I just colored it red to create a straight edge.
• 01:59 When I am done with it, I delete it and get rid of it, but it's a great assist.
• 02:03 I'm going to set that up above to grab that when I need to align something
• 02:07 exactly straight.
• 02:09 All right, use the cursor arrows to nudge.
• 02:11 Now, that means we're going to click and drag one of these butterfly wings.
• 02:15 We're going to click and drag it right up here.
• 02:17 And now I'm going to grab this spinning rotate right over here.
• 02:20 But maybe I want it to nudge and land on the edge of this guide right here.
• 02:25 Well, clicking and dragging might take it too far.
• 02:27 So, I'm just going to tap my cursor key and it will slowly,
• 02:32 pixel by pixel, nudge it into place.
• 02:35 Now, your shift-arrow key, shift-arrow key, it'll jump faster, so
• 02:38 it doesn't take as long to get over there.
• 02:41 So I'm holding down my shift with my arrow keys, but
• 02:43 just my simple arrow keys it will slowly get it's way over there.
• 02:46 All right, the zoom control.
• 02:48 That means hold down your control key and wheel up on your mouse, so that way you
• 02:52 can really zoom in and get exactly nudged into place exactly the way you want it.
• 02:58 And then zoom wheel down to zoom back out.
• 03:01 So you've gotta be able to zoom in and see these things.
• 03:04 Collapse ribbons for more viewing area.
• 03:06 On any of the ribbons up on top I can just double-click a ribbon tab,
• 03:10 click click, and collapse it.
• 03:11 It just gives me more room to see my project.
• 03:15 And then move the rulers closer to the work area.
• 03:17 Maybe I want this wing, this top left wing to be aligned exactly at the one inch.
• 03:22 Well my eyes looking at the one inch, it's quite a distance away and if I click and
• 03:26 drag it's not going to work.
• 03:28 So I'm just going to, over here, see this top left corner, these rulers?
• 03:31 Watch this, it even says drag to move ruler origin.
• 03:34 Click and drag and I can move my rulers exactly where I want them.
• 03:38 And I want this wing lined up at that one inch so I can click and drag.
• 03:41 Now you can see that little one inch marker.
• 03:43 There's a guideline within the ruler.
• 03:46 So I can click and drag and land exactly on the one inch and
• 03:49 maybe nudge it over a little more.
• 03:50 So that's why we move our rulers.
• 03:52 When you're done, you simply move them back.
• 03:54 There's one other thing about the guides I want to show you.
• 03:57 So I'm going to go back to my page design and I'm going to turn off my guide.
• 04:00 So I'm going to choose this one right here, no ruler guides.
• 04:03 And there's another little trick on the ruler.
• 04:05 The actual bottom of the ruler, there's this gray line, and
• 04:07 when I float my mouse it says create horizontal guide.
• 04:10 I can literally click and
• 04:11 drag one single guideline down into my page, same on the left.
• 04:16 I'm not moving the ruler at all.
• 04:18 I'm simply dragging a guideline so now I can click and drag and
• 04:21 nudge right into that guideline.
• 04:23 Kind of a great feature.
• 04:25 All right, the challenge I'm giving you right now is to take all those pieces and
• 04:30 parts of the butterfly and put it together.
• 04:32 Have fun with that.

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