Thursday, April 30, 2015 , , , , , ,

Introducing the Artboard panel in Illustrator cs6



In this movie Ill how you how to delete and organize artboards from the Artboards panel. 

 Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video


Ive gone ahead and saved this document 12-page mess.ai because it is a 12-page mess after all.

Lets say I want to tidy things up here, so we end up with ten identically sized artboards,

all of which are absolutely in order.

Lets say I make some additional modifications to what Ive got so far.

Ill go ahead and switch over to the Artboard tool, and then Ill Alt-click or Option-click

on this Artboard 4 here in order to select it independently of the Uberboard, and Ill

drag it down to the lower right corner.

Then Ill Alt-click or Option-click on Artboard 8 and move it up to this location.

And now lets say I want to add another artboard, but Im going to do so from the Artboard panel.

Ill go up to the Window menu which lists all the panels inside Illustrator cs6, which well

discuss in more detail in a later chapter.

Ill drop down to this command right there Artboard and click on it and that brings up

Artboards panel over here in the lower right region of the screen by default.

Im going to drag up on the top of the panel so I can see every one of my 12 artboards so far.

Then Im going to drop down this little page icon which allows me to create a new artboard,

thats exactly the same size as the selected artboard.

So Ill go ahead and click on it.

We end up with a new artboard way over there in the top right section of the screen.

In order to see it better, Ill go up to the View menu and choose Fit All in Window, or

you can press Ctrl+Alt+0, or Command+Option+0 on a Mac.

And thats one of the many navigation functions thats available to you in Illustrator, all

of which well discuss in more detail in the next chapter, and Im going to go ahead and

drag this artboard into its new location.

Now what I want to do is get rid of the Uberboard here, as well as these two little artboards.

Well go ahead and Alt-click a couple of times, itd be an Option-click a couple of times

there on the one thats number 11.

But its reading as Artboard 4, and Ill just call it miniboard 1 so that we can keep track of it.

Ill do the same with this one.

Ill go ahead and Alt-click on it, Option-click on a Mac, and change its name to miniboard 2.

And thats just so we can make sense of these artboards here inside the Artboards panel.

What you think you might be able to do is with one of the boards selected you could

Shift-click on another artboard to add it to the selection, because Shift-clicking does

add to a selection elsewhere inside Illustrator cs6

 Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video
It doesnt work here however inside the Artboard mode.

Instead you end up drawing a new very tiny artboard, which obviously is not what we want.

However, you can select multiple artboards from the Artboards panel.

If I click on Uberboard, and then Shift- click on miniboard 2, notice that I select that

range of artboards right there.

And then I could add the nonadjacent Artboard 8, which is that tiny thing I just created

a moment ago, by Ctrl-clicking on it that would be a Command-click on the Mac.

So Shift-clicking on artboards inside the panel selects multiple adjacent artboards,

whereas Ctrl-clicking, or Command-clicking adds a nonadjacent artboard to the selection.

Now rather than pressing the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, which would

select just the one artboard that appears to be selected here inside the Document window,

instead you go ahead and drag any one of the selected artboards on to the trashcan, and

that will go ahead and get rid of them.

Now lets make some sense of this document here.

Obviously the numbers are fairly wrong at this point, and were missing one.

So Im going to click on the Type tool to select it, or I could press the T key, and

then Ill go ahead and select the 8 and make it 4; select the 4, make it a 5; select the 5, make it a 6.

So a lot of busy work here. Select the 6, make it a 7; the 7, make it an 8.

Go ahead and select that final 4 and make it a 0.

And then Ill return to my Black Arrow tool just by clicking on it, and you can see that

Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video

So Im going to go up to the Edit menu and choose the Copy command or press Ctrl+C, or

Command+C on the Mac, and then Ill click on this ninth page right there, and Ill go

up to the Edit menu, and Ill choose this command, Paste in Front, which has a keyboard

shortcut of Ctrl+F, Command+F on a Mac.

That goes ahead and aligns the number to that artboard, and then Ill press the T key to

switch back to my Type tool, go ahead and select that 0, change it to a 9, and then

lets similarly modify the artboard.

So Ill go ahead and click on the Artboard tool to switch away from the Type tool.

Notice that we have Artboard 1 through 3 just fine but then everything becomes a mess as

of this Artboard 8 which should be 4.

So Ill go ahead and click on it to make it active, and Ill change its name to Artboard 4.

Then Ill click on this Artboard 4 copy 2, and Ill change its name to Artboard 5, and

Ill click on Artboard 5 and change its name to Artboard 6.

I know a lot busy work, but this is the kind of stuff you do routinely when youre working

with multiple artboards inside of Illustrator.

It can be a little cumbersome, a little labor-intensive as well, but you do have a great deal of flexibility.

So Im changing the names of all these artboards to match their numbers essentially, but that

doesnt really take care of a problem because Ive got Artboard 1, 2 and 3 according to

the little numbers up there in the upper left- hand corner followed by 8, 10, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 4.

So the artboards arent in the right order, and this can be a problem.

Im going to double-click on Artboard 1 here inside the Artboards panel which will zoom

me in on that page.

And then I can advance to the next page by clicking on this little Next button down here

in the lower left-hand corner of the window. Thatll take me to 2, and then the 3.

And then if I click that Next button again, I will go to what Im thinking is Artboard

10, but its really numbered 4.

Now I should mention you also have a Previous button if you want to go back.

If you want to do this from the keyboard, you press Shift+Page Down to go to the next

page, or you press Shift+Page Up to go to the previous page.

But for any of this to work the pages need to be in the right order.

What Im going to do is go back up to the View menu and again choose Fit All in Window

in order to zoom out from my artboards.
Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video

Notice that they appear in this wrong order here inside the Artboards panel, and its

the order inside the panel that determines the real order of those pages.

So if I want 10 to be the last page, I need to go ahead and drag Artboard 10 to the end of the list.

Notice you can also select an artboard such as 9 which is out of place, and I could nudge

it down by just clicking on the Move Down icon here at the bottom of the Artboard panel.

4 and 5 are adjacent to each other, so Ill click on one Shift-click on the other, then

Ill drag one of these pages and notice, this is being interpreted as a double-click for

some reason, which is why we just zoomed in on the page.

But Ill go ahead and drag both of them up the list, so we now have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in sequential order.

And so that means now that Im looking at Page 4, I could press Shift+Page Down to advance

to Page 5, Shift+Page Down again to go to 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, which has a 0 on it.

Again, a little bit labor-intensive, a lot of busy work going on there, but thats how

you delete and manage your artboards from the Artboards panel.
Posted by Unknown at 9:15 AM

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