- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you
how to take your arrowhead design so far,
and convert them to symbols so
that you can then turn around and assign them
to any open path outline from the Stroke panel.
Now I wanna show you how things work here.
I'll go ahead and switch to this file,
and I'll select this blue path right there,
and I'll click on the word Stroke,
and I'll click on this first arrowheads option
to bring up that menu of 39 default strokes,
starting with Arrow 1, and there's Arrow 3
that we saw in a previous movie,
with its corner points right there in the middle
and then at the end we have Arrow 39,
which looks like a kind of asterisk.
Now that's all defined by the symbols
that are included with this arrowheads.ai file.
And so if I were to go to the Window menu
and choose Symbols while this file is open
then I would see every one of those arrows,
starting with Arrow 1, then we've got two,
and three, and so forth all the way down to 39.
So the order of these arrows inside the Symbols panel
that's all that matters, to find the order
of the arrows inside of the menu there in the Stroke panel.
And so what we wanna do is take these guys
and turn them into symbols.
Now, as you can see I've modified my arrowheads.ai file.
You will see something similar
if you've been working right along with me.
I can't really give you a catch-up file though
because after all you need to make your modifications
to the local arrowheads file that's found
on your hard drive.
All right, so assuming you have been working
along with me, go ahead and switch to the black arrow tool,
up here at the top of the toolbox,
and then partially marquee this first arrowhead.
And that's gonna select three paths in all.
And just so you understand what's going on here,
we've got this guy, which represents the stroke,
and notice that it has multiple anchor points,
one at the beginning, one at the end,
and at least one here in the middle,
which defines how the arrowhead attaches to the stroke.
Then we have this outer rectangle right here
and I'm having to search around for it
by just looking out for some little icon
next to my arrow cursor.
Now what we have here is a rectangle
with no fill and no stroke.
So it's altogether invisible
and it defines the bounding box for the arrowhead,
and then we have the arrowhead design itself.
All three of those items are necessary
and because we based this arrowhead on an existing one,
everything is present and accounted for.
So all you have to do is partially marquee those items
like so and then drag 'em and drop them,
presumably to the end of the list,
unless you want this item to appear somewhere else
inside that menu, just go ahead and drag it
and drop it at the end.
And then I'll go ahead and call this guy Custom 1,
and if I left it called Caustom 1 like so,
then that's how it would appear in a menu.
That's not what I want, so I'll get rid of that A.
So in other words, the name
of the symbol's all that matters.
This text you created over here,
that was just for your sake in case you come
back to this file and you're wondering what's going on.
All right, so I'll name this guy Custom 1.
You can go with a dynamic symbol if you want to,
that's totally okay, but you're not going
to get anything extra out of it.
So you might as well stick with the static symbol,
which is more flexible for a variety of different reasons.
I'm just gonna go ahead and select it and click OK,
and we now have a new symbol called Custom 1.
And by the way, this guy is now an instance
of that symbol as indicated by the words symbol static
on the far left side of the control panel.
All right, now I wanna convert this guy to a symbol,
so I'll go ahead and marquee him,
and because I wanna add it to the end of the list,
I can just click on the little page icon
at the bottom of the Symbols panel,
and I'll call this guy Custom 2.
It's important that you spell things right.
And then, for the most compatible results,
select static symbol and click OK.
And then finally, partially marquee these guys,
click on the little page icon, call this guy Custom 3,
I actually spelled it right this time,
select static symbol and click OK,
and we now have three new symbols,
Custom 1, Custom 2, and Custom 3.
At which point you wanna go up to the File menu
and choose the Save command or press CTRL + S here
on the PC or Command + S on a Mac.
Now what I'd like to do is apply these guys.
So I'll switch back over to this file,
select this first line, and then click on the word Stroke,
and I'll click on this first arrowhead icon,
and I'm not seeing anything new.
I still have 39 different arrows
from Arrow 1 down to Arrow 39.
I'm not seeing Custom 1, two, and three,
and that's because I have to restart the program.
And so, just go up to the File menu
and choose the Exit command here on a PC,
that's the Quit command on the Mac.
CTRL + Q or Command + Q is gonna do the same thing.
I don't want to save any changes to this file,
so I'll click the No button.
And you can click Clear Clipboard as well if you like,
although it doesn't really matter.
And then just go ahead and relaunch Illustrator.
Now I wanna be able to continue to make changes
to that arrowhead file in future movies,
so here on a PC, I'm gonna right-click
on this program file right here,
it's actually a shortcut to the program,
and then I'll choose Run as administrator.
All right, so here I am inside Illustrator once again,
I'm gonna go up to the File menu,
and choose the Open command,
and I'll navigate my way to the desktop.
You Macintosh people should just be able
to double-click on a file, but when I'm running the program
as an administrator here on a PC I can't make that work.
So I'm just gonna find that darn file called
Where to find the arrowheads file.ai
and I'll go ahead and open it,
and as long as I'm here I might
as well expand the Layers panel
so I can see what I'm doing and I'll switch
to the single column toolbox,
and then I'll click this guy right here,
this first blue line, and I'll click
on the word Stroke up here in the control panel,
and I'll click on this first arrowheads option,
and I'll scroll down the list at which point
I can see Customs one, two, and three, yay,
and now I'll go ahead and select Custom 1,
and I have applied the arrowhead.
And now I'll select that second path,
and I'll click Stroke once again,
click this first arrowhead option,
scroll all the way down to the list and select Custom 2,
and then I'll select the third line,
which as you can see here is set to a gradient,
and I'll click on Stroke and I'll bring
up the arrowheads list and select Custom 3,
and notice that it is entirely compatible
with a gradient line.
Now it's important that I explain
what in the world that means.
Notice the Symbols panel is still open,
but we're not seeing any of those symbols.
We don't need to.
They just need to be inside that arrowheads.ai file.
All right so I'm gonna hide that panel,
and I want you to see if I expand
my gradient panel right there,
which you can get of course
by choosing the gradient command from the file menu,
and I switch to the stroke.
Notice that my black point is set to a location of 66%.
If I move it closer to the arrowhead,
it's gonna go ahead and fill the arrowhead as well,
which is totally rad.
And that's gonna work by the way,
as long as the stroke option here is set
to the first icon, Apply gradient within stroke.
If you switch to one of the other two,
such as Apply gradient along stroke,
then it's not going to work anymore.
So notice we get this hard division right here.
The gradient doesn't actually fill the arrowhead.
And so if you wanted to, then just go ahead
and select that first stroke option like so,
and then you can fill the arrowhead
to any extent that you like.
I also want you to note that you can change the color.
So I could go ahead and click on this first guy right there,
and change the color of that stroke
to this shade of red right there,
and I'll change the color of the arrowhead as well.
And if I increase the line weight to let's say 20 point,
that's gonna grow the arrowhead,
and of course it'll shrink if I go
with a smaller line weight, but you also have the option
of clicking on the word Stroke
and changing the scale of the arrowhead independently
of the line weight, by changing this first value
for example to 150%.
And that friends is how you take your
awesome arrowhead designs and turn them
into full fledged custom arrowheads
that you can assign to any open path outline
that you like using symbols here inside Illustrator.