- [Instructor] Alright, now that you know how to open
and edit the top secret Arrowheads.ai file
which is shipped along with Illustrator
for nearly two decades now,
I'm going to show you how you can use symbols
to create custom arrowheads.
Now, you should have the file open in front of you
and you should have saved at least one change,
that is, the expansion of the art board, and FYI,
for those of you who have access to my exercise files,
I have gone ahead and backed up the original unmodified
arrowheads.ai file and, to see that,
I'll go to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge.
Because I'm running Illustrator as an administrator,
Windows requires me to click on the Bridge icon down here
in the taskbar but, in any case, notice that I'm looking at
the contents of a subfolder called
Original unmodified Arrowheads file which is found
in the 36 symbols folder, in which case, right there
we have that original file just in case
something goes wrong, which, I'm here to tell you,
is not likely.
I've never had anything go wrong with this
no matter what I've done.
But, in any event, I'm going to return to this file right here
and I'm going to select this guy,
the arrowhead that's associated with arrow three
and I'll press control plus
or command plus on a Mac to zoom in.
I rather like this arrowhead, I like the way that it tapers,
but I don't like these corners right here.
I want something that tapers more smoothly.
And so, I'm going to start with this
but I'm going to create my own custom variation on it
by zooming back out and shift clicking on the words
Arrow 3 which is just some point text
and then I'll drag it down while pressing the shift key
so that I'm constraining the angle of my drag
to exactly vertical, that is not necessary, by the way,
you don't have to do that at all,
I'm just being Mr. Tidy here,
and then I'll press the alt key or the option key
on a Mac in order to create a copy
so that I don't harm the original.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom on in
and I'm going to double click in this point text
in order to automatically switch to my type tool
and I'll press control A or command A on a Mac
to select all that text and I'll enter Custom 1.
Now, this doesn't matter, it just serves as a label
so I know what I'm doing, all that matters
is what you really do inside the symbols panel.
But it's going to be a little less confusing
if you do some setup in advance.
In any event, I'll go ahead and click on this guy
and notice that it is an instance of a static symbol
as indicated by the words Symbol
and then in parenthesis Static over here
on the far left side of the control panel.
If I want to edit this guy, I need to break it up
and so I'll go up here to the control panel
and click on the Break Link button
in order to break that link like so.
Alright, as you can see here in the layers panel,
my layer one has popped open
and we got all kinds of different colors going on
and I'll explain why that is in just a moment
but let's go ahead and move this guy to the top here.
By right clicking anywhere inside the document window,
choosing Arrange, and then choosing Bring to Front,
or you've got that shortcut of control, shift, right bracket
here in the PC, that's command, shift, right bracket
on a Mac.
And now notice much of what follows is cyan
and that's because this guy right here is the sublayer
and you can tell that's the case if you go ahead
and target this item and then notice over here on the far
left side of the control panel, we're seeing the word Layer
which is very unfortunate because it means that we need to
break things apart and just to make things
a little more clear, I'm going to double click on the words
Arrow 3 and change it to Bad Sublayer just so we can keep
track of this guy and then I'll twirl it open
at which point I can see that it contains
three path outlines.
Go ahead and click on the first one
and shift click on the last and drag it and drop it
outside of the bad sublayer and now go ahead and click on
bad sublayer once again and then drop down to the trash icon
in the bottom right corner of the layers panel
and click on it.
And now notice that we have a bunch of cyan items here.
If I twirl Layer 1 close and then twirl back open,
everybody's blue down to Arrow 17.
Notice that guy right there?
If you target it, you'll see that it's an unnecessary
empty, by the way, sublayer and you can tell it's empty
'cause you can't twirl it open and so just go ahead
and grab it and Arrow 14, by the way,
that's another empty sublayer, go ahead and click
on Arrow 17, shift click on Arrow 14, click on the little
trash icon, and the fact that you don't get a warning
also tells you that there's nothing there.
And now you can go ahead and twirl that guy closed
and then twirl it back open and you should see
that just about everything is blue
up 'til Arrow 11.
Now, you don't have to keep doing this, by the way,
you don't have to clean up this file at all
if you don't want to but if you do,
then notice that this guy has a little twirly triangle
in front of it, twirl it open, and you'll find
that Arrows 26 and 23 are sitting inside of it,
so go ahead and grab those guys and drag 'em out like so
and then select the empty Arrow 11 right there,
click on the trash icon.
If it's got anything in it, you'll get a warning.
If you don't get a warning, you know there's nothing in it
and now you can twirl up to the top, twirl close layer one,
twirl back open, and now everybody should be the exact
same shade of blue which means that we no longer have
any unnecessary sublayers inside this file.
Again, you don't have to do that unless, like me,
you can't get anything done until you fix what's wrong.
Alright, so, anyway, go ahead and select this arrowhead
right there, the one that we duplicated,
it's going to serve as a kind of template, so,
just go ahead and click on the fill icon up here
in the control panel and change it to a light shade of gray.
Alright, now what you want to do is grab your pen tool,
which you can get by pressing the P key,
I want you to see under the View menu
that I have my smart guides turned off,
it's just going to give me a little more flexibility
and then make sure your cursor is hovered over
that tip of the arrow but you don't want to see
a minus sign next to the cursor 'cause that means
if you click, you'll get rid of that point,
so I'll undo that change and I'll press control, shift, A,
or command, shift, A on a Mac to deselect that artwork
and then I'll just go ahead and drag from this point
so that I'm creating a new smooth point
at that same tip location and then I'll create
another smooth point right here and so I'm dragging
to create each one of the points and I just want to create
a nice smooth segment and now I'm going to alt
or option drag from that smooth point to convert it
to a cusp and I'll drag right here in order to create
another smooth point right there at this location
and so everything should be snapping into alignment.
Alright, now what you want to do is press the V key
to switch to your black arrow tool,
click on that new path to select it,
and go ahead and change its fill back to black
so you can tell it apart from that first arrowhead
that we're using as a template.
Then click and hold on the rotate tool
and select the reflect tool from the fly out menu
or you can just press the O key and then alt or option click
at this anchor point right there in order to bring up
the reflect dialog box, turn on the preview checkbox
so you can see that this is wrong, we want the axis
to be horizontal, not vertical,
and then you want to click on the copy button
in order to create a copy of that path
then press the V key to switch back to your
black arrow tool, shift click on the top half
of the arrowhead, and then go up to the Object menu,
choose Path, and choose Joint,
or you can just press control J or command J on a Mac
and that's going to fuse the two halves
of the arrowhead together
after which point you can click on that gray path
in the background and press the backspace key
or the delete key on a Mac to get rid of it.
Alright, that takes care of our first custom arrowhead.
I figure, however, as long as we're doing this,
we should create three.
And so, I'll go ahead and marquee all this stuff
and I want you to notice in addition to the text
and the arrowhead, there's also an invisible box
around the outside and this line that represents
the stroke itself.
Don't change those.
Just leave those alone.
Alright, so, I'll go ahead and drag this guy down
while pressing the shift and alt keys
so that I'm making a copy of those items,
that would be shift and option on a Mac,
and then you want to press control D or command D on a Mac
in order to create a second copy,
so we have three potential custom arrowheads and all.
Now press the T key in order to switch to the type tool,
change this guy to Custom 2, and this guy to Custom 3.
Alright, now press the escape key
in order to escape the text entry mode
and I'll press the A key to switch to my white arrow tool
and I'll go ahead and zoom in on the second arrowhead,
I'll click on its outline like so
in order to select this top segment
and I'll drag this control handle up
so that we have a little bit of a wave
associated with this line and then I'll click
on this anchor point right there
and I'll drag this top control handle over to the left.
Alright, now we want this arrowhead to be symmetrical,
it doesn't have to be, by the way,
you can have asymmetry where an arrowhead is concerned
but I'm going for symmetry so I'll select this anchor point
and get rid of it and then I'll press the O key
to switch back to my reflect tool over here
in the toolbox and I'll alt or option click
on this anchor point, this left one,
and I'll make sure that the access is set to horizontal
and I'll click on the copy button
and then I'll press the V key to switch back
to my black arrow tool, I'll shift click on the top
of the arrow, and I'll press control J or command J
on a Mac in order to fuse those two halves together.
Alright, now let's go down to this guy
and I'm going to make things a little different for him.
I'll select this existing arrowhead
and I'll change it to light gray again
so it's serving as a kind of template
and then I'll press the P key to switch
to my pen tool, I'll go ahead and click, not on this guy,
but just above him and if I want things to be aligned,
then I'll need to return to the View menu
and turn my smart guides on and then I can click above it
like so and rest assured that I am aligned
because of that smart guide and then I'll click,
let's say, right about there this time
and then over here so that I have a blocky edge
and I'll click down here.
Alright, now I'll press the V key
to switch to my black arrow tool,
I'll select this template guy right here
and I'll get rid of it, and then I'll select this path
and I'll press the O key to switch back to my reflect tool
and I'll alt or option click on this left hand point right
there to bring up the reflect dialog box,
I'll make sure Axis is set to horizontal
and I'll click on the copy button
and then I'll press the V key
to switch back to my black arrow tool,
I'll shift click on this top path,
and I'll press control J or command J on a Mac
to fuse these two points right here together
but notice I have gap between the right hand points.
To close that gap, I'll press control J or command J
on a Mac again and then I'll change the color
of this arrow to black.
Alright, now I'm going to go ahead and zoom out here
so that I can see all of my arrowheads
and I'll go up to the File menu and choose the Save command
or you can press control S or command S on a Mac
to update your file.
Now, that's just going to ensure that we've saved
all the work that we've done so far.
Thing is, we don't really have any new custom arrowheads,
even though we have the arrowhead designs,
we don't have the arrowheads
and that's because if you go to the Window menu
and choose the Symbols command to bring up that Symbols
panel which, as you can see, I've gone ahead and added
back to the icon column, I'll go ahead and scroll
down a list and notice that the symbols start with arrow one
and they end with arrow 39 but we're not seeing
any of the new arrowhead set we've created so far
and that's because we need to take our designs
and convert them into symbols and I'll show you
how that works in the very next movie.