Newbie Illustrator questions

[DesertFox]

Hello,

I have been working with Illustrator for the past day and I've come across some abnormalities, which I couldn't find the answers to.

1. I have dragged some guides into the workspace. How can I move those guides around? What pointer do I use? So far, the only way for me to remove the guides is to go to View -> Guides -> Remove Guides.

2. What is the best way to measure the length of something? Im trying to get two objects in my project to have the same length.

3. Is it possible to group shapes, so that when I click on a shape from that group, all of them will be selected automatically. Im creating some shapes by subtracting one from the other....

4. My project is 600px x 179px. Can I make this super huge (poster) and still retain the smoothness of the letters, shapes, etc... They are all vectors.
Any more suggestions on this part are warmly welcome.

Thanks to all the experts who have helped me in the past.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Briefly...

1. Menu: View>Guides>Release Guides

2. Use the Transform palette Menu: Window>Transform (Shift-F8) or double-click on the shape with the tool that you used to create the shape.

3. Yes, select your objects by shift-clicking on each one or dragging around the selection and Menu: Object>Group (Apple-G)... although to subtract one object from another use the Pathfinder palette with the objects ungrouped. There are various ways to merge and combine objects within the palette although the shape modes are temporary and undoable, use the Expand button on the palette to make it 'permanent'. The Appearance palette will tell you if an object has any of these effects and others applied to it. Many of these 'merge' commands will give varying results depending on which object is higher in the stacking order than the other. Search Illustrator Help for 'stacking order'.

4. Sure. If they're all vectors, that is. Watch any transparency or shadow effects in objects if the document rasterisation is set too low in resolution. Menu>Object>Flatten Transparency or Rasterize... or Menu: Edit>Transparency Flattener Presets.

 

[cgratti]

1. I dont know if you can move the guides.

2. Use the RULERS (COMMAND +R) on a mac. You can then drag guides out to the specified size you want.

3. YEP, you can select them all and group by (COMMAND +G), then when you click any one they are all selected. Pathfinder will subtract the shapes for you easily.

4. Yes, you can make them as big as you want without any loss in quality, go to the preferences and makes sure you check the box "Scale stroke and Effects" or when you shrink or enlarge the stroke and some effects wont follow suit and look really terrible.

Hope this helped.

 

[DesertFox]

Thanks guys.

Just one question about the replies. What does "rasterize" do exactly?

 

[ATD]

Thanks guys.

Just one question about the replies. What does "rasterize" do exactly?

It means you are converting vectors into rasters or pixels.

 

[dogbone]

desert fox,

seeing as you are only a day into Illy, may I respectfully suggest you have a cursory glance at the help files? You'll get more thorough answers like how to select objects within a group and how the arrow with the + mark works.