Allow to use point-specific controls when all points of a path are selected: Convert to Smooth / Corner, Show / Hide Handles, Cut
There is a limitation in Adobe Illustrator with aligning anchor points.
When using the Direct Selection tool to highlight anchor points on a path the options to align anchor points disappears in the Align palette if all points on a path are selected.
That can be a problem if I'm trying to align two points on a simple two point path. I either have to add additional points or manually align the path using smart guides. It would be really nice if one anchor point could have key object like behavior and stay locked in place. Certain rival vector graphics applications make it pretty easy to align anchor points in this kind of controlled manner.
Bobby Henderson
shared this idea
-
As mentioned here (https://x.com/asahina_waki2/status/2025756152508875184/video/1), the Contextual Task Bar does show these controls as buttons, but these are inactive with the whole path selected. So the CTB, I suppose, just directly hooks to these controls, but since Ai doesn’t allow to use them with the path scope, CTB forbids these too. Rather stupid.
-
This includes dedicated buttons in Control panel: Convert to Smooth / Corner, Show / Hide Handles, and especially Cut. This one missing in menus (unlike 'Connect' command being actually just Join and 'Remove'), and therefore can’t be assigned to a hotkey, meaning we can’t cut a shape into segments without a workaround with skipping one point to trigger the modality — and there is a separate request for it: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/45420019-cut-path-at-selected-anchor-points-hotkey
-
iviansur
commented
I second this request. It is not intuitive when you select both anchor points of a two-point path and can't align them. There has to be a way to control this.
-
Anonymous
commented
Why does selecting all the points of a shape suddenly mean you can't convert them to smooth or corner? You should be able to convert them--however you wish--with all the points selected.
-
TT Kiker commented
The "Align" tool works on lines with 3 or more points. Sometimes, when working with two-point line segments, the end-points get vertically or horizontally out of line. Can you make the "Align" tool work on two-point lines, as well?
