Aligning objects to each other

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JCook
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:28 pm
Location: Cape Cod, MA

Aligning objects to each other

Post by JCook »

I think it would be good if there was a way to align several selected objects. If you have say, three rectangles on a layer, and they are different sizes, you could align them all by centering, by left or right edge, or top and bottom edges. A lot of graphics programs have this feature and it can be very handy.

Also, how about showing a center point in an object. This is useful for centering objects if you don't have the alignment tools mentioned above.

Jack
Genete
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Location: España / Spain

Post by Genete »

I vote for it!
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jorgy
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Joined: Sun Sep 05, 2004 8:01 pm
Location: Colorado, USA

Post by jorgy »

I've been creating a lot of DVD menus lately, and this feature would come in really handy.

jorgy
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Rai López
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Post by Rai López »

As always (jeje... :)) I asked for something like that HERE, twas a long time ago and nobody seemed too much interested on it (as always... :cry:) Well, the thing that I want to emphasize again is that it could be "easily" implemented by Lua scripting if someone could/decide to write it, regrettably it require some maths knowledges so definitetly I am not the more indicated person... :(
...
muuvist
Posts: 54
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:24 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Aligning objects to each other

Post by muuvist »

JCook wrote:I think it would be good if there was a way to align several selected objects. If you have say, three rectangles on a layer, and they are different sizes, you could align them all by centering, by left or right edge, or top and bottom edges. A lot of graphics programs have this feature and it can be very handy.

Also, how about showing a center point in an object. This is useful for centering objects if you don't have the alignment tools mentioned above.

Jack
Remember you can turn the grid on and off and snap to it and you've got disable snapping in the view menu. Command G is kind of strange, if you draw a freehand shape and select command G with all the points selected the individual points snap to the nearest grid intersection. If you've got a big grid (say 100) some points can actually be deleted. I've just been playing around with it, it's interesting but unpredictable.
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heyvern
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Post by heyvern »

I think maybe Ramón is correct.

This could be done with a custom tool script. I think the math involved might not be too hard.

AS already calculates the bounding box of selected points to create that "outline" when scaling stuff.

You would need to figure out how to line things up at different spots (center, vertical etc.)

Oh crud... you would also need to figure out the distinct groups as well to line them up... I think there are issues about accessing named groups with lua... I may be wrong though.

You would need to select ALL the objects but still access them as separate items.

Maybe a pop up tool that has a list of group names to be aligned?

This might not be as easy as I thought. ;)

-vern
JCook
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:28 pm
Location: Cape Cod, MA

Post by JCook »

I hadn't even thought about using the grid; this could help. I think a script would be fine, but I don't think it's an easy thing to write (I don't write scripts at all, so I have no idea what goes into that process). You'd have to be able to deal with irregular shaped objects, not just rectangles, so it could be a complicated bit of code. I'm sure a tool could be made to do this in AS, because really, most graphics programs have this type of capability. I do hope the AS people will look into it.

Jack
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