- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you to assign
dashes and arrowheads to your strokes.
Notice if I click on the word Stroke up here
in the Control Panel, that the entire second half
of the panel is devoted to Dashes and Arrowheads.
But we're not gonna work inside
this pop-up panel this time around.
Instead we're gonna take advantage
of the dedicated Stroke panel,
which you can see over here on the right side of my screen.
If you're not seeing it on the right side of your screen,
then go up to the Window menu and choose the Stroke command,
but don't choose that command if it has a checkmark
in front of it because that will hide the panel.
All right, now we need to expand the panel
by clicking on that double arrowhead a couple of times
right next to the word Stroke.
That will reveal every single Stroke Option
that's available to us inside Illustrator.
All right, now I'll go up to the Select menu
and choose the Letters command
in order to select those letters.
I'm gonna go ahead and zoom on into them as well.
I'm no longer interested in seeing these guides,
so I'm gonna go up to the View menu, choose Guides.
Then you can choose Clear Guides
if you really want to get rid of them,
but I'm gonna choose the Hide Guides command
in order to just turn them off.
Now I'm gonna make a couple of others adjustments.
I'm gonna take the Weight value down to 10 points
and I'm gonna set the Cap back to its default,
which is Butt Cap.
I'm gonna set the Corner to its default as well,
which is Miter Join.
The reason is that round caps in particular
can end up affecting dashed outlines
in ways that I will demonstrate in a future movie.
But for now, we're better off without that clutter.
All right, now I'm gonna turn on the Dashed Line checkbox.
Notice that you have independent control
over your Dash and Gap values.
If the Gap value, by the way, is empty,
then Illustrator will go ahead and use the Dash value
for the Gap as well.
Now I'd like to demonstrate these two icons,
they're very important, up here.
If the first one is selected,
then Illustrator is gonna go ahead
and preserve the exact Dash and Gap values.
Let's say I set the Dash value to 20,
and I take the Gap value down to 10.
That's gonna work out pretty well
in some regions of the illustration,
but notice down here at the end of the h,
we pretty much lose any semblance of dash.
It's very possible depending on how I raise this Gap value
that I could end up losing the corner of the e as well.
See what happens when I have a Dash of 20
combined with a Gap of 12.
I completely lose the right corner of this e,
and I lose the top of the f as well.
If you want to give Illustrator permission
to adjust your Dash and Gap values on the fly
in order to make your corners and endpoints look better,
then go ahead and click on the second icon.
That will re-establish the corner of the e,
as we're seeing right here, and we'll get back a little bit
of the dash at the endpoints.
The thing is you don't get back the full dash.
Notice along the top curve of the f here,
we have these full 20 point dashes
followed by right here at the end point a 1/2 a dash.
In other words that one is only 10 points long.
That happens, by the way, at all the endpoints,
at the bottom of the h, over on the right side of the g,
and so forth.
So once again, Illustrator likes to think in terms
of halves where strokes are concerned.
Now you can enter up to three pairs of Dash and Gap values
if you like in which case I could achieve
this kind of plaid effect right here.
But I'm happy with just one set of Dash and Gap values,
so I'm gonna get rid of the second pair
just by deleting that second Dash value,
and then pressing the Tab key.
I'm also gonna set the first Dash value to 12
and I'm gonna take the Gap value down to 1 like so.
Now let's take a look at Arrowheads.
I'll go ahead and click on this first option right here,
and I'll scroll my way down
to these sorta two-toned Arrowheads down here
starting with Arrow 28.
Notice in all you've got 39 different options
to choose from.
I'll go ahead and click this guy,
and as you can see, the arrows are way too big.
If that happens to you,
then you can take advantage of the Scale value right here.
I'm gonna take the Scale down to 25%
in order to produce this effect.
Now not all the Arrowheads are arrows,
some of them are Ends.
For example, if I go ahead and click
on this second Arrowhead option
and scroll my way down to Arrow 30,
I'm not gonna get an Arrowhead this time,
I'm gonna get these feathers.
But again, they're too big so I'll go ahead
and take that second value down to 25% as well.
If you want to lock those two values into agreement,
then just go ahead and turn on the chain icon.
Now you also have the option of swapping your Arrowheads.
Let's say I want the tail up here at the top of the h
and I want the Arrowhead down here
in the bottom right corner,
then I could just click on this little Swap icon
in order to make it so.
All right, but these are not the Arrowheads I'm looking for.
I want some pointing fingers,
so I'll go ahead and change the first Arrowhead
to Arrow 36, let's say,
and I'll change the second Arrowhead to Arrow 35
in order to achieve these pointing fingers.
Now I'll reduce the Scale value to 15%
and because the Link is turned on,
that'll reduce the size of both Arrowheads like so.
Now I'm gonna scroll over to the c
so that you can see what happens
if you change this Align setting.
Right now the end of the Arrowhead
is aligned to the endpoint, do you see that?
If you want the Arrowhead to start at the endpoint instead,
then go ahead and click on this first icon,
and you'll move those hands outward like so.
In my case that's not what I want, however,
so I'll just go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on a Mac.
What I want to do is reduce the fussiness
of some of these letters.
I'm gonna click off the text to deselect it
and then I'll click on the b, Shift + click on the d,
and then scroll my way over to the g,
and Shift + click on that letter as well.
Now let's say I want to abandon one of these Arrowheads.
Then I'll just go ahead and click,
let's say on the second Arrowhead option right there,
and I'll change it back to None.
We'll end up with this better looking effect here.
I'm gonna zoom out slightly here,
and I'm gonna scroll my way up to the infinity sign.
I'll go ahead and click on it in order to select it.
Now let's say I want to duplicate
the Dashes and Arrowheads onto this symbol,
then I would drop down to the Eyedropper Tool
near the bottom of the Toolbox, or I could press i key.
Then I'll just go ahead and click on one of these letters
such as the c.
Notice that lifts the Dashes,
but it doesn't not lift the Arrowheads.
That's because the Eyedropper is set
to ignore Arrowheads by default.
To change that setting, go ahead and press the Enter key
or the Return key on the Mac when the Eyedropper is selected
in order to bring up the Eyedropper Options dialog box.
Then just go ahead and turn on this Appearance checkbox.
When you do, that will collapse that Option
as we're seeing here,
at which point just go ahead and click OK
to accept that change.
Now if you click on the c once again,
you will lift the Arrowheads.
What I want you to notice is
even though this is a closed path outline,
Illustrator still has a sense for where
this path begins and where it ends.
That just so happens to be right there
in the center of the shape.
And that, friends, is how you take advantage
of Dashes and Arrowheads here inside Illustrator.