Illustrator Snapping Issue

[hurstville]

Does anyone has problems with Illustrator snapping? Sometimes when you zoom in, it simply will not snap to a object, guide or document boundaries.

Sometimes when you chance the zoom it will work, but often I have to put a guide there, when it does not snap to an object, or put another object to a guide, so it will snap.

Driving me crazy - Am i alone here?

Cheers, Dimitri

 

[Al Ferrari]

You don't mention version or system version.

 

[hurstville]

well, it happens to the last few versions. It is a general Illustrator question.

Or are you just interested in what I work with? At the moment I work on a Mac OS 10.5, Illustrator CS4.
But as a freelancer I work on several versions, operating systems, and it seems to be the same trouble.

Need my shoe size too?

 

[kyle]

Hurstville:

I tested this on a computer with some version of some operating system using some version of Illustrator, and here's what I found:

Guides must not be locked.

"Snap to Point" or "Smart Guides" or both must be turned on (in the view menu).

Guide snapping is much less buggy and (in every case I tested) exactly accurate with smart guides on.

The snapping distance appears to be affected by the "Snap to Point" setting in Preferences > Selection & Anchor Dispay.

If you are moving an object, you must begin by clicking on the edge that will snap to the guide.

 

[splenguin]

Dimitri, you're not alone. I notice this quite often as well, though moreso with snapping to objects than to guides. It does seem to happen when you're zoomed in quite close. I've found that if you grab the object by the edge you want to snap, and drag it to the edge of the object you want it to snap to - if the snapping doesn't happen, just put it close, change to a different zoom factor, and it'll start to cooperate after that. It is irksome.

 

[hurstville]

Cheers

Cheers

Yeah, that is exactly what happens. Mostly document bounds. Once it happens, I can zoom out, these 2 objects won't snap anymore. Often I work around by quickly placing a guide there, or make another object, which will snap to one object, then the other will snap to this.

The funny thing is, this is going on for a few versions already. ce la vie...

And yes, I have illustrator running, smart guides turned on, use the tools on the edge, computer running, electricity bill paid and wear my pants. (only when I work on-site at an agency, different story at home)

Come on, give me some credit here.

I wonder if Corel Draw has those issues.

Cheers, Dimitri

TEXTURES 4 FREE

Dimitri's Air Guitars

 

[Grnofslt]

Dimtri,

I read the posts for this string and was curious so I did a bit of reading in the Adobe Help Manual for Illustrtor CS4. This is what I found:

In the index there was no mention of snapping an object to another anywhere. There was mention of snapping points to each other.

While watching a Lynda.com Video taught by Deke McCelland He did a bunch of aligning objects to each other. This is how he did it. In the preferences on the Selection and Anchor Display panel, he had us check both Object Selection by Path Only and Snap to Point. Then he stressed memorizing the command for turning the bounding box on and off (Cmd + Shift+ B) By turning off the bounding box you can move drawn objects by an anchor point rather than the path itself rather than resizing the object like you would with the bounding box turned on. Then by dragging the anchor point you want in alignment with a point on another object, your cursor shows when you have an anchor point under it, by its appearance (black triangle with rectangle as tail) when you drag the anchor point to the position of another anchor point, the cursor turns to a white triangle when they are perfectly aligned. I worked through this at 6400%. There was no jumping to or snapping, just the indicator with the cursor changes. Which from the Tutorials I was watching was normal.

I used CS4 on an Intel mac with OS 10.5.7.

I hope what I posted was helpful. When I read of problems and difficulties others are having, I get curious and try to work through the problem so as to learn what to do before i come across it in a work situation.

 

[pjm10]

hi there,
adobe illustrator cs4 drives me mad with it's messed up smart guides, i use illustrator every day for furniture design and there seems to be no fix for the issue. adobe simply messed up the smart guides in cs4. the bummer the snapping problem seems to be random, sometimes the guides snap correctly other times they don't adobe suggests using the ctrl key to make the guides perform like cs3, i find that works randomly as well. i guess we will just have to wait until the next version. the whole guide thing has really slowed me down.

 

[PDL]

The Cross-hair tool of the DeskPack for Ai plugins may be interest to you. It makes positioning objects in Ai much easier. Watch the online demo video here: DeskPack, boost productivity: boostX

Download the free trial to see for yourself if it's the solution for you.

 

[arioprobo]

i agree with grnosflt...

 

[mschilling]

I find that the stacking or layering order makes a difference too. By moving what you want to snap to, below what you are moving, sometimes makes a difference, along with zooming in. I also have tried to relax about many aspects of assembly, and eyeball things where I can.

 

[rwillustrator]

Admittedly, it's a bit unclear as to what is happening, but maybe this will shed some light.

Illustrator does have a setting called "snap to point" -- but it doesn't tell you WHAT snaps to the point, does it? Prior to CS4, Illustrator always snapped your CURSOR to the point -- not the point you dragged. So if you grab an anchor near its edge, you snap the edge of the anchor to another point. I know, this is totally silly, right? It only SEEMS like zooming in help because when you're zoomed in real close, it's much easier to grab an anchor from its center.

In CS4, Smart Guides can now snap OBJECTS to other points. Meaning you can grab a rectangle from its right side and have the left side snap to a guide or another point. This matches the behavior of InDesign by the way.

Mordy

 

[mschilling]

Thanks for that explanation.
I did notice the difference with snapping and CS4 today.
At first I thought it wasn't working at all, being used to CS3, but then it did what you said, especially after I turned up the snap distance to 8 (max).

 

[mandruch]

This problem was really bothering me so I started messing around.
Grab a path (not a point), hold down the command key, and simply drag/snap to another path.

 

[Rectangler]

Yes!!!! A buried pixel snapping option in a vector program is exactly what I've always needed. Not only do vertical and horizontal lines consistently fly around at a rate of 0.5px -- but you are also unable to force it to the correct position by manually typing in the transform box. This handy feature is also a good way to get a new keyboard after smashing the old one with frustration.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Yes it's great for some, and I know others that have been so frustrated by spacing not being consistent as a result of pixel grid snapping. Important to know of it's existence!

 

[SWC1144]

Just my 2 cents, but I always work with Smart Guides on (cmd-U), and if I'm having trouble snapping two objects (points, paths, etc) together, I hold down the cmd key and it seems to force it to find a point to snap to. (And yes, I'm on a Mac.)