- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to use
the simplest of the line tools,
which Illustrator calls the Line Segment Tool.
And all it does is allow you to draw straight lines.
But as we'll see in the next movie,
there's a lot you can do with straight lines
inside Illustrator.
So the first thing I'm going to do
is create a new layer to house my lines,
and while it isn't absolutely necessary that you do this,
it's good to get in the habit
of creating independent layers for your designs.
And it's often useful to keep your guides,
which we drew in the previous movie,
isolated to their own layer as well.
So the first thing you want to do
is make sure that you're seeing the Layers panel
up on screen.
Then, drop down to this little page icon
at the bottom of the panel and click on it
to create a new layer in front
of the previously selected one.
The only problem with working this way
is you end up with an unnamed layer,
notice in our case it's called layer two.
Of course, you can change that
just by double clicking on that name
and typing in a new one,
but you may find over time,
that you prefer to name your layers as you create them
and you do this as follows.
First thing I'm going to do is escape out there
and then press Control + Z
or Command + Z on a Mac to undo the creation of that layer.
Then, I will once again dropdown to the little page icon,
and I will Alt or Option + Click on it
to force the display of the Layer Options dialog box.
So once again, that's an Alt + Click
or an Option + Click on a Mac.
And now, I'll just go ahead and call this layer, lines,
and click OK in order to create my new lines layer.
Next, if you're working along with me,
go up to the View menu
and make sure Smart Guides is turned on.
So, if it's got a check mark in front of it,
that's just fine.
If it doesn't, then go ahead and choose the command.
And then, you want to select the Line Segment Tool,
which you'll find directly underneath the Type Tool
in the single column toolbox.
If you're not seeing it, just go ahead and click and hold
on whatever tool you do see
and then select the Line Segment Tool
from the top of the flyout menu.
Notice that it has a keyboard shortcut
which is a backward version of the tools icon,
so in other words, you can press the backslash key
to select the Line Segment Tool.
You'll also have the option
of releasing on this vertical bar
in order to create an independent mini toolbox
that contains just those line tools
that we saw in the flyout menu.
Alright, assuming that your Line Segment Tool is selected,
just go ahead and drag some place inside the document window
and because we have Smart Guides turned on,
you're going to see a heads up display.
The d-value stands for distance,
and it represents the length of the line.
And we're also seeing an angle value
that tells us the angle,
and of course, both of these values are going to change
on the fly.
Once you get the effect you want,
just go ahead and release the mouse button
in order to create that straight line.
Now, notice these two swatches up here
at the beginning of the control panel,
over here on the left hand side.
The first one indicates the fill,
and the fill is the color inside of a shape.
A straight line, however, has no inside.
And so, it's generally best to make sure its fill
is set to none, as indicated by this white box
with a red slash through it.
If you're seeing some other color,
just go ahead and click on the swatch
and select this very first swatch
in the upper left corner of the popup panel.
Next, we see the color of the stroke,
which is essentially the color of the outline,
as we'll see in more detail
over the course of these chapters.
And third, we have this line weight value,
which represents the thickness of the stroke.
And so, just so I can see things a little better on screen,
I'm going to click this down pointing arrowhead,
and I'm going to choose eight point
in order to thicken up that line.
Alright, so obviously, drawing a straight line
is pretty easy work inside of Illustrator,
but you do have a few more options
that are available to you.
For one thing, I'll go ahead and start dragging
at the intersection of these two guidelines.
Rather than dragging from one endpoint to the other,
you can draw from the center outward
by pressing and holding the alt key
or the option key on a Mac.
And now, you can see that that line is centered
at the intersection of those two guides.
But you've got to keep the alt key down,
that is to say, the option key on the Mac,
because if you release at any point as you're drawing,
then you're going to go back to your standard drawing method,
that is to say, you're going to start at one endpoint
and end at another.
But because I do want to go from the center out,
I'll keep my alt key down,
again that's the option key on a Mac.
You can also constrain the angle of your line
by first dragging with the Line Segment Tool
and then pressing and holding the shift key.
And because my shift key is down,
the angle value, as you can see here,
goes from zero degrees to 45 degrees to 90 degrees
to 135 and so forth.
So, in other words, pressing and holding the shift key
constrains the angle of the line
to a multiple of 45 degrees,
which includes of course
vertical and horizontal lines as well,
but again, you've got to keep that shift key down.
If you release the shift key,
the constraint is going to go away.
So, because I want an absolutely horizontal line, let's say,
I'm going to keep that shift key down
until after I release the mouse button.
Now, in addition to actually drawing the line
by dragging inside the document,
you can click with the Line Tool
in order to bring up a dialog box
that allows you to specify exact dimensions.
And again, that's just a click with the tool.
And let's say I want the length to be 300 points.
I could just enter that in there,
or I could enter something like 2.5"
in order to create a two and a half inch line,
and then, that way, as soon as I press the tab key,
Illustrator automatically converts the inches to points.
Now, I'll enter an angle value of let's say 45 degrees,
and I'll click OK in order to create a line
by the numbers like so.
Alright, so much for creating lines.
Now let's see how you can edit them.
Notice if you move your cursor
over one of these points right here,
you're going to get a little arrowhead,
which tells you that you can drag these points
in order to manipulate them like so,
and if you drag while pressing the alt key
or the option key in the Mac,
then you're going to expand or contract the line
with respect to its center point
as we're seeing right here.
You also have the option of moving the line
to a different location,
which you do by hovering your cursor
not over the line itself
but rather over that center point right there,
at which point, once again,
your cursor will change to an arrowhead,
which tells you that you can drag the entire line
to a new location.
And then, one more thing you can do,
just so you know all your options,
you can hover your cursor very close to an endpoint,
not quite on it, at which point
you'll get this rotate cursor
and then if you drag, you're going to once again
rotate the line around its center
without changing its length.
So it's just a straight ahead rotation.
And those, my friends, are the many ways
to use the Line Segment Tool
here inside the most recent version of Illustrator CC.