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Make grids more useful

I'm a fan of grids. I use the grid almost always whenever I need one.

I have to use the default 'In Back' grid and turn 'Overprint preview' on, to make the grid overlay my art, so I can see what I'm doing and where I'm snapping (because the cursor does not give any feedback about this).

But the method it's not perfect because of bugs I reported here and there.

So I propose to improve options we have.
Allow users to set grid’s color (check) and transparency, give an option to define line width — some monitors are too dense and huge to have 1px line.
It could be useful for dark designs, when the overprint-grid trick doesn't do much.

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AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    The team 'fixed' the behavior that allowed us to 'overprint' the grid when Overprint preview mode was enabled.
    Now the grid won’t be displayed above opaque objects when Preferences > Guides & Grid > Grids in Back is enabled.
    The image shared is the correct and expected behavior — and this is what team thinks.

    However.
    I hate it personally. I’ve been using the Overprint hack to display subtle grids above everything since pre CS era.
    Disabling Grids in Back to display grids above artwork is horrendously loud — lines are too prominent!

    Here’s a report about it: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/50738213

  • Sho commented  ·   ·  Report

    In the recently updated "Illustrator 30.0", the grid has become more difficult to use.
    Even if I turn on overprint preview, if the object's opacity is set to 100%, the grid behind it is completely invisible.
    In Ver28.x and 29.x, this inconvenient phenomenon did not occur.

  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    It looks like CADguides panel from the CADtools plugin offers a way to customize grid colors, without any relaunch. No way to make stroke weights and opacity though, but I suppose API just doesn’t allow this for plugins.

  • Sergey Osokin commented  ·   ·  Report

    In the App Preferences, we set a single grid color. But the subdivision lines are drawn in a lightened version of the grid color, which the user cannot control.

    In scripting, there are grid color keys:
    Grid/Color/Dark/r,
    Grid/Color/Dark/g,
    Grid/Color/Dark/b
    and subdivision color keys
    Grid/Color/Light/r,
    Grid/Color/Light/g,
    Grid/Color/Light/b.

    Why not let users customize this color in the Illustrator interface? For example, two-color accent grids can be created for those who want to clearly see the dimensions of large and small cells.

  • Paul Messer commented  ·   ·  Report

    Currently we can set a color for gridlines. Could we specify a transparency for these lines too? Having gridlines in the foreground that do not completely write over the project would be great.

  • Derek S. commented  ·   ·  Report

    +1 for custom transparency level for grids

Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests: Snapping

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