Vertical Adjustment in Transform pallet is working in reverse.
The vertical adjustment of Transform Effect in the Appearance pallet is giving incorrect values (positive value for negative effects and negative value for positive effects). Menu path = Appearance Pallet/FX/Distort and Transform/Transform. In the second screen shot, the COPY of the red circle should be ABOVE the original by 300 pts according to the value in the vertical adjustment.
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Aaaron, this is a sad story with the direction of the Y-axis.
Several years ago Adobe decided that they are going to flip it and give users no direct control over it. From the very beginning we had the zero placed in the left bottom corner of the page, and Y-axis had positive values go up, from bottom to top... Now we have it bury underground, to conform InDesign (where we have text flowing from the top edge) and Photoshop.
Same thing happens for you at your screenshot. Study the vertical ruler. You have your zero in the left top corner. So when you command Illustrator to move the circle vertically '300 pt' it moves it along the direction of the Y-axis — down.
There is a way to flip the Y-axis though, to make it go up, as it once were. You have to locate 'Adobe Illustrator Prefs' file, edit it, and set these two flags to 0:
/isRulerIn4thQuad 0
/isRulerOriginTopLeft 0There is a separate request to allow users to switch it in-app:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/32428157-allow-users-to-set-direction-for-x-and-y-axesAlso, this toggle leads to a small but irritating error with the Move dialog, and there is another report about it:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/32428041-move-dialogue-is-broken-when-y-axis-is-flipped
