Align/distribute to angle
It would be so cool if you could align/distribute objects on an angle. Say for example I want to align objects to a 45 degree angle, instead of aligning to the highest/lowest point, or to the left or right.
Elgee
shared this idea
-
There are several ways to align points to an angle...
I’d use this method (please watch the GIF attached).
1. Create a line to define an angle (it’s not really needed, I just added it to better explain the method)
2. Disable all snaps except for Smart Guides
3. Select the objects
4. Pick Rotate tool and click once into the first point of the line to define the center of rotation
5. Grab the last point and move your cursor into the first one and a bit to the right, if necessary, to let the selection rotate to have the line become horizontal; remove the line
6. Select only points you want to align
7. Either click Align to Key Object button in the Align panel to use the point closest to the start of the path in your selection, or — like I did — Shift-click a point to remove it from selection and Shift-clikc again to add it back — Ai automatically picks the last selected point as a key object
8. Align the selection horizontally
9. Select the whole path
10. Opt/Alt-click the path into the original point of rotation with the Rotate tool
11. Negate the previous value, comit.
Done.
Not as long as the description takes.Ideally, Align should have worked with the rotated view...
But it doesn’t, even with Constrain Angle set to counter-compensate it (and there is request about it: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/44001624), and we don’t have a way to quickly rotate view to an angle of a line (but we can copy the angle of the live line and paste it into the Rotate View field). -
Sebastian Harder
commented
This would be a very handy tool
-
Can you provide an example how should it work?
