Object Snap
What is Object Snap?
Object Snap provides extra control when adding objects to a drawing or aligning objects with other ones.
Object Snap is a combination of enhanced object snapping and alignment. You enable and adjust it using the View controls. When Object Snap is enabled, Design Intuition shows you the potential alignment points between objects in your document. When you move an object, for instance, Object Snap shows you the potential places to which you can align that object with its neighbors. It does so using a combination of lines showing the intersecting planes (side with side, side with center, and so forth) and circles showing the intersection points.
Object Snap is best understood by trying it out:
- In the View controls, make sure Object Snap is enabled.
- Create a Design Intuition document and add an object to it.
- Draw another object. See how Object Snap shows you the natural edge and center alignments for the new object with respect to the existing ones?
- Now, pick an object and move it around the document. You'll immediately see the potential alignments between it and the other objects in the document.
It's too snappy! How do I calm it down?
Open the General Preferences window and adjust the snap grabbing power. This number is how many pixels between the object you are moving and the one it snaps to before it snaps. The larger the number, the more snappy. The size of the snap ovals (the long way) is equal to this number of pixels.
What other controls are available?
You can, of course, change the color of Object Snap's indicator lines using controls in the General Preferences.
More than one way to turn Object Snapping off ...
There are several ways to turn object snapping off: (a) by view, (b) by group and (c) on the fly, while mouse dragging.
By View: In the view controls, uncheck Object Snap.
By Group: You can turn snapping off for a group's contained objects. Sometimes, snapping a group (a Smart Object, for example) can be frustrating when this isn't turned off. Select the group, switch to the Object inspector and uncheck "Snap to" in the Grouped Objects section.
On The Fly: You can hold down the control key to toggle object snapping.
