Illustrator Quick Tip: Align to Key Anchor (point)
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Today I want to share a quick alignment tip for Illustrator. First of all let me say that this is a very simple tip but it won't be useful every time. You have to need one of your points not to move. That's the purpose of this technique. Like I said, it's easy, so let's get started.
Aligning to a key anchor works very much the same as aligning to a key object except you need 1 less click. I have a very crude shape drawn below as an example. I want to align a few of these anchors to the highest anchor on the left, but I DON”T WANT THE ANCHOR I ALIGN TO TO MOVE AT ALL, which is why I'm using this technique and not simply the align to selection option in the align palette.
Step 1:
Select each anchor individually, and the LAST anchor you select will automatically be your “key anchor.”
Step 2:
First, make sure that “Align to Key Anchor” is active in the Align palette (it should happen automatically when manually selecting points), and then hit the “Vertical Align Center” button.
Step 3:
Done. You'll notice that the last anchor we selected didn't move at all. All of the other points wore aligned to match the key anchor's vertical location. Like I said, this probably won't be something you use every day, but it is good to know. 🙂