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- In this movie I'll
show you how to create

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the classic dotted outline,

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that is to say a dashed outline

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that comprises round dots.

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So assuming that you went ahead

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and created that template
a few chapters ago,

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go up to the File menu and
choose New from Template,

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or you can press that
shortcut of ctrl + shift + N,

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or cmd + shift + N on a Mac.

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In my case the template's
called RGB with center guides,

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and now I'll go ahead
and click the New button

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in order to bring up this blank document

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with a couple of center guides.

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Alright, now go ahead and
select the Rectangle Tool

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from the shape tool fly out menu,

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again you have a keyboard
shortcut of M for that tool,

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and then I want you to
position your cursor

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at the intersection of
the two guide lines,

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press and hold the alt key,
or the opt key on a Mac,

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and click to bring up
the Rectangle dialog box.

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Now as you may recall the Width

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of this artboard is 1008 points,

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and the Height is 672 points,

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so I'm just going to
dial in those two values.

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And then I'll click after the Width value

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and enter -80,

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and I'll do the same thing
for the Height value.

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And then after pressing the tab key

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to let everything update,
I'll click on the OK button

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in order to create this new shape.

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Next I want the fill to be transparent,

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so I'll go ahead and
click on this first swatch

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up here in the control
panel and change it to None.

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And by the way, just in case
you're ready for a tip here,

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assuming that the fill
is the active attribute,

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which it is, you can see that
here in the Swatches panel,

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then you can set it to None

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by just pressing what
this thing looks like,

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the / key.

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And so I'll just go
ahead and press the / key

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and you can see now that
we have None for the fill.

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Alright, now I'm going
to change the line weight

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to 20 points.

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And I'm going to change
the color of that stroke

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to a shade of orange, which
is this guy right here,

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R 247 G 147 B 30.

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And that will give us
this thick orange stroke.

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Alright, now I'll press the
escape key to hide that panel

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and I'll click on the word Stroke

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to bring up the Stroke panel.

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And I'll select Dashed Line like so.

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And I'll take the dash value up to

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something like 20 points let's say,

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and then I'll set the gap
value to something very large

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like 50 points.

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In which case we'll end up
with the separated squares

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that you see here.

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And the reason that
they're absolutely square

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is because the dash value
matches the line weight value.

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Now I can round off each and
every one of these dashes

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by changing the Cap from Butt Cap,

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which as you know is the default setting,

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to Round Cap.

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And that will stroke every
single one of these dashes

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like it's a miniature path outline.

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And so essentially at this point

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we have a bunch of Tic Tacs,

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or flattened cylinders if you will.

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If you want to turn those
into circles instead

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then you go ahead and take the dash value

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all the way down to 0 and
then press the tab key.

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And now we want to just
change the gap value

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to something bigger than the line weight.

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Because if we change it
to exactly the line weight

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then these dots will end
up running into each other.

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To give them a little space go ahead

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and set that gap value to 30.

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And then make sure that this

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second icon is selected right here,

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otherwise if you click on
the Preserve icon right there

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then your dots will no longer align

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to the corners of the rectangle.

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Alright, so I'll go ahead
and turn on that Align icon.

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And then I'll press the escape
key to hide the Stroke panel.

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And then I'll press ctrl + shift + A,

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or cmd + shift + A in order
to deselect my artwork.

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And that is how you create
a classic dotted outline

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here inside Illustrator.

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In the next movie I'll show you

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how to use a dotted outline

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in order to create this very simple gear.