Grids and Guides

Grids and guides help to align objects. Snapping automatically aligns objects when you draw or move objects.

Grids and guides are always drawn on top of shapes. The their drawing order relative to each other can be changed by changing their order in the Object Tree.

Grids

You can add grids to a document with Object > Insert > New Grid. Grids are objects and show up in the Object Tree. You can have as many grids as you want.

The visibility of all grids can be controlled with the View > Show Grids and Hide Grids menu options. The toolbar also has a Show-Hide Grid shortcut button. If there are no grid objects in the document and grids are made visible, then a grid object is automatically added to the document.

Grids have the following properties:

  • Spacing - horizontal and vertical spacing between grid lines
  • Color - color of the grid lines
  • Opacity - opacity of the grid lines

You can make a grid hidden by clicking the eye symbol in the Object Tree. In this case, the grid will be ignored for snapping.

Guides

You can add guides to a document by dragging with the mouse from the rulers. Guides are objects and show up in the Object Tree.

The visibility of all guides can be controlled with the View > Show Guides and Hide Guides menu options.

All guides can be locked with the View > Lock Guides menu option. It is also possible to lock individual guides in the Object Tree.

Guides have the following properties:

  • Transform - guides can be rotated
  • Color - color of the guide
  • Opacity - opacity of the guide

You can make a guide hidden by clicking the eye symbol in the Object Tree. In this case, the guide will be ignored for snapping.

Snapping

Objects often need to be aligned with each other. Snapping makes alignment to objects or their nodes easy. Select View > Snap > Enable Snapping to enable snapping. There are four ways to snap:

  • Snap to Objects - snaps to object bounding boxes
  • Snap to Points - snaps to object nodes
  • Snap to Grids - snaps to visible grid lines
  • Snap to Guides - snaps to visible guide lines

Tip: You can temporarily disable snapping by holding down the Command key.

Pixel Grid

You can set the pixel grid visible with the View > Show Pixel Grid menu option. The pixel grid is shown if the zoom level is larger than 1000%.

Pixel grid snapping aligns objects and their nodes to the pixel grid to prevent fuzzy looking edges. Enable pixel grid snapping with View > Snap to Pixel Grid or by using the shortcut button in the toolbar.