Adobe Illustrator CC 2015 - Manual (Page 50)

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Workspace
Last updated 6/5/2015
Rulers, grids, guides, and cropmarks
Use rulers
Rulers help you accurately place and measure objects in the illustration window or in an artboard. The point where 0
appears on each ruler is called the ruler origin.
In Illustrator CS5, rulers are similar to other Creative Suiteapplications like InDesign and Photoshop. Illustrator
provides separate rulers for documents and artboards. You can select only one of these rulers at one point.
Note: Window rulers would be called Global rulers in this document.
Global rulers appear at the top and left sides of the illustration window. The default ruler origin is located at the top-left
corner of the illustration window.
Artboard rulers appear at the top and left sides of the active artboard. The default artboard ruler origin is located at the
top-left corner of the artboard.
The difference between artboard rulers and global rulers is that if you select artboard rulers, the origin point changes
based on the active artboard. In addition, you can have different origin points for artboard rulers. Now, if you change
the artboard ruler origin, the pattern fills in objects on the artboards are not affected.
The default origin point for the global ruler is at the upper-left corner of the first artboard and the default origin for the
artboard rulers is at the top left corner of the respective artboard.
• To show or hide rulers, choose View > Rulers > Show Rulers or View> Rulers > Hide Rulers.
• To toggle between artboard rulers and global rulers, click the View > Rulers > Change to Global Rulers or View >
Rulers > Change to Artboard Rulers. By default, artboard rulers are displayed, so Change to Global Rulers option is
displayed under Rulers sub-menu.
• To show or hide video rulers, choose View > Show Video Rulers or View > Hide Video Rulers.
• To change the ruler origin, move the pointer to the upper-left corner where the rulers intersect, and drag the pointer
to where you want the new ruler origin.
As you drag, a cross hair in the window and in the rulers indicates the changing Global ruler origin.
note: Changing the Global ruler origin affects the tiling of patterns.
• To restore the default ruler origin, double-click the upper-left corner where the rulers intersect.
The coordinate system has now been switched to fourth quadrant, which was previously the first quadrant. In
Illustrator CS5, when you move downwards, the value of y-axis increases and if you move toward right, the value of x-
axis increases.
For saving to legacy versions of Illustrator, the Global rulers remain at the position set in legacy document. Although,
the origin point does not move to upper left, the coordinate system changes to fourth quadrant.
The change in coordinate system and the ruler origin does not apply to scripting, which allows you to retain old scripts.
However, when you transform objects using scripting, the Y coordinate values differ from the values that you set in the
Illustrator user interface. For example, if you apply a move operation of say Y= +10 points, then to emulate the same
movement with scripting, apply a transformation of Y = -10pts.