- In this movie we will review the special relationship
between artboards and rulers.
Which is not an exciting topic.
Which is why I am reserving it
for the last movie in this chapter.
You may want to reserve it for that time of night
where you pour yourself a warm glass of milk
and go to bed.
But it is information worth knowing.
So the first thing I'm going to do is
switch to the artboard tool, which as you know now
has a keyboard shortcut of shift + o.
And then I'm going to go up to the View Menu,
choose the Rulers command and choose Show Rulers,
or more easily, you can press its keyboard shortcut,
which is ctrl + r, here in the PC; or cmd +r on a MAC
And we're seeing some pretty high values up here in Rulers
and that's because we're working in Points,
but you can change the unit of measure anytime you like
but right clicking on either one of the Rulers,
either the one up here at the top of the screen
or the one along the left side of the document window.
And then you can choose any unit you like,
such as inches.
Now, notice that we have a zero point
and all the other numbers extend away from it.
So we've got 0 right here
and then we've got 4 on either side,
in other words, 4 inches to the right
and then 4 inches to the left.
And so forth.
So what that means is that we have origin point right here.
I'm going to go ahead and double click on this tick mark
next to the 0 in the horizontal ruler.
And I'll double click in the tick mark
below the 0 on the vertical ruler.
In order to create a couple of guides that demonstrate
exactly where that zero zero point is.
Now, you want the zero zero point to be in a useful location
because it serves as the origin for all the coordinate
positioning values.
So for example, where this first artboard is concerned
if I go ahead and click on this upper left point
in the reference point matrix,
I can see that its position is an X value of -6.08 inches
and a Y value of -0.67 inches.
That is not of any use to me.
That is not going to serve me well in the long run.
So you want to come up with a more useful zero zero point.
And you can do that in a couple of different ways.
First, you can drag from the intersection of the two rulers.
See the square right here?
Go ahead and drag from it.
And that will move the origin point.
And just for the sake of demonstration,
I'm going to drop it in the middle of the 3.
And now you can see that the zero point is moved there.
I'll go ahead and double click on its tick mark
to set a vertical guide.
And I'll double click on this tick mark
to set a horizontal guide.
And you can see, sure enough, the zero zero point
is right in the center of that 3.
And if that is an important point to me, that's great.
So I'm not going to judge where you put the zero zero point,
you just do need to put it someplace.
Another way to work is to attach it to the top left corner
of one of the artboards.
And you do that by clicking on an artboard to selet it.
And then you go up to that square
at which the two rulers meet and you double click on it
and now notice that we've got a zero zero point.
And I'll double click on this tick mark right there
and I'll double click on this one as well
and you can see that it exactly aligns
to the top left corner of that artboard.
And also if you go up here to the control panel,
you're going to see X and Y values of 0 inches a piece.
And that's works out very nicely.
Now in my case, I really want that zero zero point
to be at the top left corner of the very first artboard,
so I'm going to click on Artboard 1 right there
and double click on that square again in order to
reposition the zero points, and now you can see
that I've got an X and Y value of 0 inches
for this particular artboard.
Alright, now I no longer need these guidelines
all over the place.
So I'm going to go to the View Menu, choose Guides
and then choose Clear Guides,
we've got a little bug going on
in this version of the software.
If you see that, what you need to do
is just go ahead and press the esc key to hide the menu,
then press the esc key again, in order to switch back to
the black arrow tool.
Click on something, anything, it doesn't matter.
And then go up to the View Menu, choose Guides
and choose Clear Guies,
in order to make all those guidelines disappear.
Aright now in order to make this next point clear here,
I need to switch back to the artboard tool
and now notice that the 2nd artboard is selected
at which point we can see that my X value has changed
to 8.17 inches, the Y value is still 0 inches,
because after all, the top of the 2nd artboard
is aligned to the top of the 1st artboard.
These value are a little misleading though,
since everything is set up in points.
So, I'm going to right click on either of the rulers
and switch back to points link, so now we'll see an X value
of 588 points.
If I click on the 3rd artboard,
the X value is going to increase to 1176 points.
If I click on the 8th artboard,
we'll still have that same X value
because its left edge is aligned to the left edge
of the 3rd artboard, but its Y value has now changed
to 732 points. And so on.
And the reason I'm telling you this is because
what we are experiencing when we're using the artboard tool,
is a thing called the global ruler.
Meaning that we have a single zero zero point
and nothing more.
So everything, all the artboards are being measured
with respect to that zero zero point.
And you should know, I'll go ahead and click on the last
artboard here and double click on the square again,
to set the zero zero point to its upper left corner.
What I want you to see here if I click on artboard 3,
is that negative X values go to the left,
while positive X values go to the right.
Where the Y value is concerned, and this may seem peculiar
but this is the way it works throughout most of Illustrator,
is negative values go upward and positive value go downward.
Alright, I'm going to switch the zero zero point
back to the upper left corner of the 1st artboard,
however, by selecting it and then double clicking
on that square.
Now again, we have a global ruler when we're working inside
the artboard mode.
But that doesn't necessarily carry through
once we escape the artboard mode,
by of course pressing the esc key.
So now here I am with a black arrow tool selected.
As long as the 1st artboard is active, the zero zero point
starts at its upper left corner.
But as soon as I click on a 2nd artboard, like so,
notice that the zero zero point moved right there
its right at that location, so everything is emanating from
the upper left corner of the active artboard.
The same thing that happens if I click in artboard 8,
there's the zero point right there,
and there it is in the vertical ruler.
And this is what is known as artboard rulers.
But you can switch back and forth.
You can't in the artboard mode.
You always have the global rulers.
But, when you're working outside the artboard mode
you can switch back and forth
by going up to the View Menu, choosing Rulers
and then choosing this command right there
Change to Global Rulers, in which case you will have
just that one zero zero point,
and everything else is measured from it,
if you want to switch back to the artboard rulers,
then you just return to the View Menu
and choose the same command at that position,
which now reads Change to Artboard Rulers.
And now we see that the zero zero point has moved
to the top of the active artboard, which is artboard 8.
And that is the immensely entertaining interaction
between artboards and rulers here inside Illustrator.