- [Instructor] In this movie I'll show you
how to move an artboard with and without its contents
using the Artboard Tool.
And I want to warn you up front,
especially if you're new to Illustrator,
that we're going to take a bit of a slow
and winding approach to this topic.
And that's because Illustrator handles artboards
differently than I've seen any other program handle
just about anything.
And so if Illustrator's ways seem bizarre at first
I want them to make perfect sense in the end,
because this really is a practical and powerful feature.
So let's say I want to take Artboard one right here
and I want to move it to a different location
here inside this document.
Well, artboards inside Illustrator
work very differently than pages inside other programs.
So you may remember from the previous chapter
that we went up to the File menu and chose the New command
and that gave us the ability not only
to change the size of the artboards,
but to change the number of artboards as well.
And if I were to click and on the More Settings button
then I can decide how those artboards are arranged,
how many columns we have,
the spacing between the artboards, and so on.
Well, that's great for creating a new document
and it's a pretty traditional approach,
but that's not how it works
when editing an existing document.
All right, so with that I'll go ahead and Cancel out here.
Now before I go any further
I want you to go up to this Workspace option
in the top right portion of the screen
and if necessary, choose Essentials Classic from the menu.
Then go ahead and bring up that menu again
and choose Reset Essentials Classic.
And that way we can see both the very large Properties panel
on the right side of the screen,
as well as the more streamlined control panel,
which is this horizontal strip
up here at the top of the screen.
Now you don't usually need to see both of them,
because they mostly duplicate each other,
but I want you to have a clear understanding
of what's going on.
Now notice when the black arrow is selected
up here at the top of the toolbox
that we have a Document Setup button
both in the horizontal control panel
and down here at the bottom of the Properties panel.
Now in another application
you'd expect this Document Setup button
to let you change the quantity
and even location of your pages,
but in Illustrator clicking on either one
brings up this dialog box right here,
which allows you to change the Bleed values if you like
and you can modify your Unit of measure.
But otherwise we're not seeing anything in the way
of those width and height values
and we're not allowed to change how many artboards we have.
What we do have is this Edit Artboards button,
which also appears in the Properties panel,
but that's pretty deceiving,
because notice if you click on that button
it closes the dialog box
and it switches you to a different tool,
this guy right here toward the bottom of the toolbox,
which is known as the Artboard Tool.
So the better way to work,
assuming that some other tool is selected,
is to avoid the Document Setup button,
and you can safely ignore the Edit Artboards button
in the Properties panel,
and just go ahead and switch directly
to the Artboard Tool in the first place.
Because this one tool does pretty much everything
where managing artboards is concerned.
Now notice that we're seeing handles
around the selected artboard
and you can switch to a different artboard
just by clicking on it
and each time you do you'll see handles
for that specific artboard.
We also have labels,
so that we know that this guy is Artboard three,
and its neighbor is Artboard four, and so on.
Now one of the confusing things about this tool
when you first start using it
is that clicking with the tool selects a different artboard,
but if you then click again,
say on the three, you're going to create an artboard
inside of that artboard.
And Illustrator's going to automatically size that artboard
in order to accommodate its contents,
that is to say, the big number three.
Now you may look at this and say how in the world
does this new artboard match the size of the three
when the three is so much shorter?
Well, bear in mind that every character of type
is bigger than it appears,
because it's actually designed to accommodate
other characters in this font.
And those other characters maybe taller than the three
or they may have descenders,
such as the bottom of a lowercase G.
And you can confirm this is the case
by switching back to the black arrow tool,
which Illustrator calls the Selection Tool,
and then notice if I click on that number three
that its big blue bounding box here
is the same size as that new artboard.
Now obviously I don't want that new artboard,
so I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the Undo command,
which has the standard keyboard shortcut
of Control + Z here on the PC or Command + Z on the Mac,
and that goes ahead and restores
our eight original artboards.
All right, now as I was saying,
I want to move my first artboard to a different location
and so I'll go ahead and select the Artboard Tool,
and notice that its tool tip tells us
that it has a keyboard shortcut of shift + o.
And that's the letter O by the way, not a zero,
which matches the O sound in the word artboard.
All right, so I'll go and switch back to the Artboard Tool
and notice that it remains selected
even if I switch between different documents.
And then I'll go ahead and click on that first artboard
and I'll drag it fairly arbitrarily
to a different location, like so.
And then, just so that I can see
all the artboards at the same time,
I'll go up to the View menu and choose Fit All in Window
in order to zoom out.
All right, now I can move this artboard
to any location that I like.
And I can even move it so that it snaps into alignment
with the other artboards.
And so notice under the View menu
we have a command called Smart Guides,
which is turned on by default,
as indicted by this checkmark.
This is an exceedingly useful feature inside of Illustrator
as we'll see in this and future movies.
And so if you're seeing a checkmark
in front of the command, great,
if not, choose the command to turn it on.
And so when working with artboards
I can go ahead and drag this guy down
and notice that we're seeing these magenta snap lines
emitting from the bottom right corner of Artboard one.
The problem is that I'm snapping into alignment
with the wrong portion of my document.
Notice that I've snapped the bottom right corner,
so that it aligns to the neighboring bleeds,
which is not what I want.
So I'll just go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on a Mac to undo that move,
and then I'll try again.
And this time I'm looking to snap to the center
of both Artboard two on the right
and Artboard five down below.
Now the only problem with Smart Guides
is that you sometimes end up snapping into alignment
with the previous location of the artboard,
as we're seeing here,
which obviously is not what we want.
And so if you encounter that behavior
just try moving the artboard to yet a different location
and then drag it down, so that it snaps properly.
And again, we're looking for the center snaps
that you're seeing here inside the video.
At which point I'll go ahead and release
in order to put that artboard back in place.
Now there is a kind of artboard gotcha
that can snag you when you're first using the tool.
Notice if I drag Artboard one down,
so that it overlaps Artboard five,
and then I drag it again,
I end up moving the five along with the one
and that's because the five has become part of Artboard one
and we're moving all of the contents at the same time.
Which is why it's so useful, by the way,
that we have multiple undos inside Illustrator.
And so all I have to do to backstep
is to press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac
a couple of times in a row in order to undo those changes.
Now notice the same will happen
if I select Artboard five here
and then I start dragging it,
I'm going to end up moving the one along with,
even though the one doesn't appear
to be on Artboard five at all.
But recall that the number
is actually taller than it appears,
because it has to accommodate descenders
that are associated with the lowercase letters
inside of that font.
And so the one actually descends down into Artboard five.
All right, so I'll just go ahead and undo that change
by once again pressing Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac.
And then I'll go ahead and switch back to the Artboard Tool.
Now the reason this is happening
is because of this icon up here in the control panel,
Move/Copy Artwork with Artboard.
And that it's turned on by default.
And what that tells you is when you click on an artboard
and drag it you're going to move the artwork along with it.
Now you might wonder why in the world
you'd ever want to turn that icon off
and let me show you.
I'll go ahead and switch over to this document here
and notice that Artboard five over here
is positioned out of alignment with its contents.
And this kind of thing happens, frankly, all the time.
After all, even in the world's most powerful drawing program
it's possible to make mistakes.
And so notice if I drag that artboard
back to its proper location
so that I have those center Smart Guides,
even though I've moved the artboard exactly where I want it
I've moved the contents out of alignment.
And so if I then had to switch to a different tool
and move all of those items back into place
that would be a very big pain in the neck.
So the better thing to do is to undo that move
by once again pressing Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac,
and then I'll go ahead and turn off that icon,
Move Copy Artwork with Artboard.
And now notice if I drag that artboard where it goes,
it moves independently of the artwork,
which is exactly what I want.
Now notice this option also appears in the Properties panel
as this checkbox, Move Artwork with Artboard.
And so if I turn it on
the icon in the control panel turns on
and they both turn off together as well.
And in fact, every single item that you're currently seeing
in the Properties panel
is one way or other duplicated up here in the control panel.
So for example, we have Name over at this location
and we have Name up here in the middle of the control panel.
Even this button right here, Artboard Options,
is duplicated in the form of this icon.
The only difference is that the Properties panel
consumes a bunch of extra space on screen,
which is why I very much recommend
that you do yourself a favor and free up that screen space
by right-clicking on the Properties tab
and choosing this command right here, Close Tab Group.
And now notice if I go up to the View menu
and choose Fit All in Window
that we have room to magnify the artboards,
so we can see way more detail inside the document.
All right, now assuming at this point
you're done working with the Artboard Tool
all you have to do is switch to a different tool
in order to use it
or you can just press the Escape key to switch away
from the artboard editing mode,
which returns control to the black arrow tool.
And that's how you use the dedicated Artboard Tool
in order to move artboards along with
or independently of their contents here inside Illustrator.