Need help with illustrator cs5

Question

Hi everyone.....first time on a forum and hope someone can help. I am  using illustrator cs5 on OSx snow leapard. I am  designing wings, following a demo and when I get to the part where I am supposed to use the reflect tool, I come to grief. Firstly the reflect tool dialogue box has two windows in the options part.....patterns or objects. I am supposed to be able to uncheck these but they are greyed out and not changeable. Secondly when I try to reflect my wing, using the option key to copy as well, the program appears to turn my wing over and give me a view of what would be the back of the wing, not a reflection. My fella and I have spent some considerable time trying to figure out what the issue is but to no avail...........Hope someone can help ..........Josephine Star.

Answer 1

Josephine,
In the future, please try to title your threads with something meaningful. Titles like "help" or "need help with Illustrator" or "Beginner Question" are useless. Fairly all posts are about "help with Illustrator" and about 98% of them are from beginners.
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
why won't my reflect tool operate properly.....we have just spent another hour trying to sort it out.
Is your Reflect Tool not operating as shown in Illustrator's instructions (online Help)? If not, how is it behaving differently?
Have you looked at the instructions? If not, do you not think that spending over an hour while typing posts in an online forum, waiting for answers (which are as often incorrect as correct) for every little question you may have about Illustrator is a much less time-efficient way to learn the program than reading the provided documentation?
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
when I try to reflect my wing, using the option key to copy as well, the program appears to turn my wing over and give me a view of what would be the back of the wing, not a reflection
"A view of what would be the back" (i.e.; a mirror image) is what Reflect means in the context of Illustrator's Reflect tool. What did you expect different?
Clicking with the Reflect Tool while holding alt/opt(Windows/Mac) sets the center of transformation where you click and invokes the dialog. So, for example, if the object is bilaterally symetrical about its vertical axis (like an upward-pointing triangle), and you altClick its center and then click OK in the resulting dialog, there will be no difference, because the mirror image of such a triangle reflected across a vertical axis would be identical.
Unless it changed in CS5 (don't have it loaded on this laptop)--which I doubt, clicking Copy instead of OK in the dialog is what makes a reflected copy; not holding the alt/opt key.
If you...
1. Mousedown with the Reflect Tool
2. Press and hold Alt
3. Drag
...then you will reflect the object about the position where you mousedown, interactively (without invoking the dialog). While doing so, if you also add the Shift key before mouseup, the reflection will be a copy.
JET