Smart guides OFF pasteboard

Does anyone know if it is possible to utilize the smart guides OFF the pasteboard? Should it work? It doesn't appear to do so for me. Thanks for any insight anyone can provide.

So you are saying you want to either snap objects on the pasteboard to other objects or snap page objects to pasteboard objects using smart guides? As you've seen, it doesn't work that way. file a feature request, and be sure to make a case for how this will improve your workflow. Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Similar Messages

Smart Guides off by a tiny amount

I've recently been working on a project involving a large amount of stroked paths. I'm tracing a scan of a line drawing and have been using the Scissors tool a lot to trim where one path runs into another. When I do this I turn Smart Guides on and use Scissors to "snip" paths at intersections. I'm careful about only clicking when the intersection is highlighted, but occasionally I notice that the trim is a tiny bit off. Usually I'll spot a line's round cap extending a little past the line it "runs into" (as in the image here), and when I zoom in I can clearly tell that the anchor point I created with the Scissors tool is a little off. Often it's more obvious than the image example I've provided. I then have to use Scissors again, usually at max zoom, and I continue on with a slight queasy feeling in my stomach, knowing there are ones out there I haven't caught.
I can't even be sure if this issue is only related to the Scissors tool, it might just be a Smart Guides thing. This is obviously not a crushing problem, but I think this community can respect a desire for precision in vector artwork, not to mention the fact that when I start adding fills I may run into problems. Pathfinder might work better than Scissors here, but I don't need a workaround, there's no reason Smart Guides should be dysfunctional with Scissors.
I've searched past discussions pretty thoroughly and haven't found anything like this. Maybe it's something with my prefs? I've never messed with them -- just started using Illustrator on this machine several months ago. Also, for this project I'm currently working with pixel units with Align to Pixel Grid turned off, if that helps. Can't recall ever experiencing this issue before, although most of my work in Illustrator has been on different machines.
CS6, late 2013 iMac running 10.9.2. Thanks in advance if you have any ideas!

Tara,
You may be haunted by the Align to Pixel Grid ghost.
If so, select everything and untick Align to Pixel Grid in the Transform palette, and also untick Align New Objects to Pixel Grid in the options there.
To avoid it altogether, use a document type without Align to Pixel Grid as the default (RGB documents for web and the like), or change the default.

Smart Guides Turning Off - Can't Turn Back On!!

I love the smart guides and use them all the time... unfortunately my smart guides have been turning off (I'm either inadvertently doing something, or this is a glitch or something going on) but after using smart guides on a document it all of sudden stops working. The only way I've been able to negotiate around this problem is by opening a new document and just copying my old materials in there and moving forward like that. That's a pain and and also doesn't explain what's going on!!!
When I go View> Grids & Guides ... smart guides is selected but the option is grayed out and I can't change it even if I want to. I'm really not sure what's going on here. Using CS6
Any help is much appreciated!!!!

Okay ran the update but didn't seam to change the issue. When I tested the user ID I made a new one. The issue is that reguardless of the user id it seams like once it "goes bad" there is no getting it back. Since I'm working on these files at my job I'm on them for a while as part of a series or larger project. Its usualyl when I'm like 80%-90% done. Some of these files I've been working on for over a month and others I've only been working on for only a few days before the smart guides stop working. So far 3 out of 3 projects I've been working on have eventually run into this issue. Its hard to say when its going to stop working.

Turning off smart guides breaks pen line

Has anybody noticed that if you switch smart guides on or off (with Cmd+U) while you are drawing with the pen tool it breaks the path. You have to go back and draw from the last anchor point. Sometimes smart guides help, sometimes they're a pain, depending on what part of a path you are drawing, so it's useful to be able to turn them on or off while you are drawing. Is there a workaround? (CS3).

Thanks Kurt and Mon. This works fine.
However, there's another thing I noticed while I was playing around with smart guide prefs:
It seems there is no way to disable Angles, not even if you try to delete all figures from the 6 boxes. At least, I can't get Custom Angles to work that way. Smart guides always seem to revert to 90° & 45° Angles. When drawing with the pen it's often useful to see where other anchor points and paths are, but constrained angles are a pain.

CS5 Smart Guides: Can't Turn Off?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't seem to turn off the smart guides in CS5. The menu item is unchecked; turning them on and then back off again does nothing.
Is this a known issue? Operator error? Something else?

Wow that was quick.
In reply to:
And how do you figure turning off frame edges is going to make it LESS likely that you'd move the wrong object?
Well it wasn't in previous versions and now it is. Therefore I can gauge my performance based on previous versions.
For example at this moment I have a 2 sided A4 brochure that has to be at the printer by the morning. The job is for a surf company. The file contains a place illustrator file of a pretty complex illustration. There are photos and text boxes and on top of that I have several cut and pasted vector files from Illustrator as part of the theme that I need editable so I can change colours, gradients and transparencies. So all up there is a lot going on. I have quite a few more layers than usual, so that I can lock layers to prevent the "smart highlighting" happening. But in the design process I need a lot of elements active to be tweeked to get the file the way I want it to look.
Now I have a new mac with lots of RAM, but still when you have a complex file with lots of stuff going on, and you want to zoom in and change something quickly because the client who is sharing screen with you on skype wants to put a gradient fade behind a some text to give it some pop... which then makes a millisecond of redraw time happen and your mouse is also loaded to place an image at the same time into a frame, I have found that when you are moving your mouse across the page, while the "smart frame edges" function is occurring, the highlighted frame sometimes will dump the loaded image or eye dropped colour into an unintentional frame or element. It doesnt happen all the time but it is enough to make you want to write in a forum like this. I do this kind of work enough to know it is stifling the creative process. If I was designing a catalogue with a photo on one side and a description on the other there wouldn't be as much of a concern.
Sorry if the spelling is bad its almost 2am and I still have about an hour to go.

Smart Guides: Turn Off!

How do I turn off Smart Guides?? I have gone the View > Grids & Guides > Smart Guides route as well as command-U and they stay on. They're nice, but it's like blinking Christmas lights while I'm working.
At least, they're called Smart Guides in AI…when all the frame edges light up when moused over…

This is Frame Edge Highlighting, far and away the feature of CS5 most vocally hated. You cannot turn it off.
But use this workaround, from Mike Rankin in the InDesign Magazine Tip of the Week in January:
Basically, just keep your hand on the spacebar.
TIP: Spring-Loaded Tools to the Rescue
InDesign tries very hard to help you align objects when you drag by snapping them Do you dislike the Frame Edge Highlighting that appears when you mouse over frames in CS5? Spring-loaded tools can help. Frame edge highlighting only appears when you use one of the selection tools. With spring-loaded tools, you can press and hold single keys to temporarily switch to any other tool. As long as you hold the key for more than a second, you'll switch back to your previous tool when you release the key. You have plenty of choices (t, \, p, f, m, n, c, e, g, z, etc).
Holding the spacebar also prevents the highlighting from appearing, and it's a nice big place for your fingers to rest. Heck, you don't even have to pay much attention to where you press--just rest your hand in the middle of the keyboard and lift it up when you want to select something. But don't hold v or a, which are the shortcuts for the selection tools.
- Mike Rankin
(Though in fairness, Mike had suggests this several times in the past year, though not with the spacebar. E.g. he recommended 'H' back in June over on
InDesignSecrets. "H" for Hate).
There have been several threads on this, including the locked 201-post monster, Frame edge highlighting, and the feature request Allow Frame Edge Highlighting to be turned off, and frame edge highlights on hover.
Basically the takeaway is that it only happens with the selection (V) and direct selection (A) tools, and that multiple people have asked Adobe for a control to turn it off, and if it matters to you, then you should too, by filling out the wishform.

Indesign cs6, smart guides on, transform not proportional

i use my smart guides a lot. i have found that when i go to transform an image using the direct select tool, and the cmd+shift function, the percentage of the scale is not consistant on teh x and y axis (they should be the same). i do have the "constrain proportions" active. i have tested without them being active. it seems, so far, the only time i can recreate the issue is when the smart guides are active.
-osx 10.8.3
-indesign cs6 (cloud subscription)
-smart guides on
-transform window open
-constrain proportions active
-direct select tool
-select image within a frame with direct select tool (white arrow tool)
-use shift+cmd and drag and scale, repeat (small and large areas)
-repeat a few times and watch the horizontal and vertical percentages in the transform window. percentages will not be consistent after a few tries
does anyone else have this issue?
can anyone else recreate this issue?
does anyone have any suggestions on a fix (other than turning off the smart guides)?
thanks in advance
-maria

okay, i finally figured this bad boy out! here is the solve in case you guys come across the problem
-indesign cs6, go to preferences>guides and pasteboard
-go to "smart guide options"
-turn OFF "smart dimensions" and "smart spacing"
all is well with the world, and i can sleep peacefully once again

Smart Guides not available

Why is the Smart Guides option grayed out in my View menu. I am unable to turn them on/off and all options are selected in the Preferences ➡︎ Guides & Pasteboard ➡︎ Smart Guides menu.

Thank you for the valuable info on fixing my Smart Guides issue. Evidently I wasn't fast enough to press four keys while restarting ID, so I used the method for exposing hidden files, entered the Library, and changed the names of two ID files thereby replacing the preferences. Worked like a charm!

CS5 Photoshop - How do I disable Smart Guides

Hello,
Smart guides are driving me mad. It never selects the region I'm selecting. It causes the selection to always jump a little up or to the left or right and then I have to zoom in to readjust the selection. The innacurate selection thanks to these guides are driving me absolutely crazy! Is there a way to disable them because I can't seem to find it.
CS5's logic is really aggravating and slows down the creativew process as I have to interrupt my flow constantly.
Any help is appreciated
~TheEternalAbyss

I'm not sure if I can get a screenshot that would be helpful. I can try to get some, but in the meantime I can try to describe step by step what I'm trying to do:
1. I select the Marquee toool in order to make a selection around an object I want to modify
2. Then I am simply making my selection
3. The result is the my selection is just slightly off from where I had selected
4. Then in order to fix it I have to zoom in and modify the selection using ctrl/alt+selecting with my mouse
I hope this made it a bit clearer.

[CS3 - Win] Smart Guides not showing up when Snap To Grid enabled

Has anyone else encountered this bug?
AI CS3 13.02
Smart Guides are turned on, but hovering over items does not show the cyan hints, snapping to anchor points / paths etc does not work. This only occurs when Snap To Grid is enabled. If you then go and turn it off, the Smart Guides start working again as expected.
Is this a known bug?
Tom

Thanks for the reply Mike. Smart Guides work perfectly for me provided Snap to Grid is turned off.
I can see there being a conflict between snapping to grid and smart guides in CS3 - which takes precedence? From a UX perspective, if these two snapping modes are mutually exclusive, there should be at the very least an alert letting you know the other mode is disabled; the menu item should be greyed out. Or if it's truly an either-or situation, then the menu needs to be revised such that both snap to grid and smart guides are within the same submenu, and only one can be selected at a time, toggle with CMD+SHIFT+OPT+U.
T

Smart Guide/Snap to point not working

Hi
I am trying to remove a circular shape from a rectangle in illustrator, the retangles width is 10px and the diameter of the circle is 13px, I centre the circle ontop of the rectangle ( or I appear to) but when I use the Shape mode tool minus front, the circle is no longer centred ( see images)
I have tried switching off smart guides and snap to grid and am still having the same problem.
In the above image you can see once I have divided the 13px circle from the rectangle it has moved off to one side.
Also when I am trying to manually place the circle ( rather than using the centre guides ) I can only move it by a large degree it alway moves further than I move the mouse, could this be because of a pixel grid? I do not think I am using this. ( can see in the above image where I am trying to place the circle and when I let go of the mouse, the grey circle is where it lands
From the 2 images below you can see that there is a 1px difference on either side of the extracted circle I was trying to get centred
I should mention that the 'Align to pixel grid' in the transform menu is inactive when I am trying to do this, as I initially thought that this may be the cause of my problems, but it made no difference

Rebecca,
So why does the minus front tool mess up alignment so much?
No clue. I believe this issue has never been reported.
At a first glance, it really looked like an Align to Pixel Grid issue, and also the fact that it works when both object widths have an odd (or even) number of pixels.
But that is apart from the fact that you stated that it was off. If it were on, Align to Pixel Grid would apply to the circle, to the rectangle, or to both.
Obviously, it is possible to (direct) select each and check. It is also possible to check the Y value of the centre for both in the Transform palette and see that they are actually identical before applying the Pathfinder.
And if on, Align to Pixel Grid should also affect/destroy the Object>Path>Divide Objects Below way. And it should make it impossible to even place both objects centre aligned when one is an odd number of pixels wide and the other is an even number wide.
As the issue is described, it may indicate some Pathfinder>Minus Front malfunctioning.
It may be worth trying some of the following things (you may have tried/done some of them already) and see whether it helps (the following is a general list of things you may try when it is not in a specific file; 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences):
1) Close down Illy and open again;
2) Restart the computer;
3) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible);
4) Move the folder with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible);
5) Look through and try out the relevant among the Other options (Item 7) is a list of usual suspects among other applications that may disturb and confuse Illy, other items may also be relevant);
Even more seriously, you may:
6) Uninstall, run the Cleaner Tool if you have CS3/CS4/CS5/CS6, and reinstall.
http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

Are Smart Guides no longer reliable? Free transform is finnickey as well....

I've noticed that, since downloading CC on its release last year (and keeping consistent with updates), there has been a noticeable unreliability with Smart Guides. I will have a rectangle, for example, that I want to snap to a guide or another shape. The green text will pop up, saying "Guide," so as to let me know it is going to snap to the guide, but it doesn't. I set it down, and it's a nudge or two or three off. Has anyone else encountered this?
I've also noticed a difference in free transforming. It doesn't always happen, but take, for instance, the rectangle in the following series of images. I click it with the Selection Tool once, then attempt to stretch it upward. The bounding box containing the shape is suddenly not form-fitting around the rectangle, and when I stretch, it doesn't stay put the way it should. The bottom edge of the rectangle is moved up, as if the shape is centered within the wrongly-sized bounding box. Is this part of a new feature that I'm not aware of? Would love to get to the bottom of this. It's a hassle having to direct-select the edge I want to pull up.

This is what I'm referring to:
As to your second question: don't ask me ... :-)

Cannot center Smart Guides exactly? CS6

Hello: Level: Newbie OS: Windows 7 64 bit Illustrator CS6
I am learning about Smart Guides but have found myself a bit perplexed.
I have drawn a Circle with the Ellipse tool by clicking and then entering the values: 432x432
Then I hover the mouse over the "center" square which reads: x:260 & y:259.5 which doesn't make sense to me ~ if it is the Center shouldn't the x & y values match? Any way, so then I manually type in the x & y value boxes 260.000 and they both stay at 260.
However, when I pull out the Smart Guides and place the horizontal guide over the center the x & y values also do not match and so I enter the number manually but the values will not stay where I set them.
e.g. The x value states: 259.5 and the y value: 260.000 and no matter how many times I reset the x value it always reverts back to 259.5 ... ???
The vertical smart guide is also off by rougly .5
Now, since I am attempting to make a symmetrical object ... won't this differentiation cause "eye sores" once the artwork is done?
I am (still) attempting to construct a compass with a rose, increments, needle etc. etc. and my first attempt ... and I quote the awesome Jacob ...
looks as if I have dropped it on the floor
So, after all that ramble'n ... I suppose I would like to know from others if this is just the way things are and rather I am suppose to just deal with things being a "bit" off??
Thank you for your time
hope you're having a great day/night

Hey Jacob ...
So, I did the Move the Folder but ... dang'it I'm slow at times ... and so, I am unsure if I followed your directions right ...
I signed into my computer under admin and then when I searched my C drive for the Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings folder ... two folders came up
One for the Admin account and one for mine
So, I right clicked on both of them and chose ... Move to Desktop ... placing both folders on the Desktop of the Admin
Then I restarted my computer and logged in under my user name not as the Admin & then opened Illustrator but I am still having the same problems.
The Align tool doesn't Align so I gotta eye things out. The first compass I showed you was a result of "listening" to illustrators X/Y/H/W settings.
And when I have the Align to Pixel Grid ON I still do not have integer values when they ought to very well be integers.
So, I just hoping I didn't go about things the right way.
I am now going to go log back into my pc as an Admin and undo the Moved folders and give things a go again.
Jacob ... you've been such a huge support to me that I cannot thank you near enough!!
PS. to check things I made a circle that's 300x300 > the W = 300 and H = 300 and the X = 250 and the Y = 250 < the Align to Pixel Grid is on
Then I choose the Line tool and make a Line of 20px > then directly below I make an other Line of 20px with the Align to Pixel Grid on ...
I select the top 20px Line and the Values are: X = 249.5 and Y = 132 H = < Align Pixel Grid is on
I select the bottom one and X = 250 and Y = 358 and H = 20 and W = 0 < Aliign Pixel Grid on
Then I Group them both and the values are: X = 249.5 and Y = 245 and H = 246 and W = 0
Then I Rotate by 20 degrees and the first set Values are: same as just above
The next set Values are: X = 249.5 and the rest is the same as above
The next set Values are: X = 249.5 and Y = 245 and H = 231.164 and W = 84.137
As I go around the H & W values keep changing. After all you've patiently taught me ... they shouldn't change? OR the H & W do change b/c the bounding boxes outline the Path and Not the line itself ... right?
The 5th copy Values change to: X = 249.5 and Y = 244.999 and so on from there. Not to beat a dead horse but is this how it ought to be?
Uhhh sigh ... ...

Align / smart guides not working

I am having a super-weird problem. I have a black rectangle that I would like to be exactly the same width as a larger white rectangle. When I try aligning the left edges, it is ever so slightly off. When I turn on smart guides and try to transform the black rectangle to snap to the white rectangle's left edge, the same thing happens -- ever so slightly off.
There are only 3 rectangles in the entire .ai, and I have checked to make sure that snap to pixels / snap to grid are turned off. I have quit and restarted the program.
Any clue why align is being funky, or how to fix it?
Thanks!

It sounds like something is going on with the alignment using the align tool. You could, if need be do it the old fashion way by the numbers. Entering numeric values fo X and Y positions to align exactly. This can be done with copy and paste too.
Wait, you may need to check how your aligning in Preferences.
Are you aligning to Preview Bounds or to the actual vectors?
Or… Vector

Smart Guides, Constrain Proportions and Resizing an Object.

When I have Smart Guides on and I'm trying to resize an object while holding shift (to constrain) Indesign seems to ignore the shift key. Usually when there's other objects in close proximity, or just closely aligned, vertically or horizontally. The image I posted is a good example. Trying to resize the bracket object while near all those other objects results in a lot of skipping around, and constrain not working. You can see in the image the outline is not constrained, even though I'm holding the shift key. It just wants to jump to those Smart Guides regardless of what I'm trying to tell it to do.
This isn't much of an issue, but basically I'm wondering if this is a bug, or if the Smart Guides, just take priority. It's bit annoying turning smart guides on and off constantly to accomodate this odd behavior. Does anyone have any insight on this?

Hi,
I'm on a Mac Snow Leopard/CS5, and there actually is an update I haven't installed yet. I'm on 7.0.3, so I'll try that out.
If it is a bug it's certainly not the end of the world, but I was curious if anyone else had been dealing with it as well. I love the Smart Guides, except for that.

Smart guides OFF pasteboard

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