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M
Miller Studio
Known Participant
November 11, 2016
Question

Constrain Angle not working in Illustrator 2017

  • November 11, 2016
  • 17 replies
  • 9494 views

Mac OS: 10.11.6

Adobe Illustrator: 21.0.0., 2017

I work in isometric perspective a lot. In doing so I am constantly changing my restraining angle from 0°, to 30°, and 60°. I've noticed in Adobe Illustrator version 21.0.0., 2017, that after changing my restraining angles, the application does not respond to the change accordingly. Holding the shift key, and moving an object, will not constrain the movement to the specified angle. This causes me to have to quit the app, then relaunch. Very frustrating. I have quit the app. Purged caches. Check disk permissions. Restarted. Problem still persists. It seems to work initially, then fails.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    17 replies

    Ray Yorkshire
    Ray Yorkshire
    Participating Frequently
    October 20, 2017

    Hooray! finally fixed.

    A couple of plugin freebies I found, to go with the functionality.

    Isometric Line Tool

    Draws straight lines (paths) constrained to the isometric angles of 30, 90, and 120 degrees.

    Free!

    Links near the bottom of this page:

    Adobe Illustrator plugins - rj-graffix

    Lives in the toolbar when installed.

    A shame illustrator doesn't have better inferencing like sketchup

    And Astute Graphics DirectPrefs - no new tools, just a handy panel to save digging into menus to change

    the constrain angles, nudge increments, and provides the ability to easily toggle guides and grid on and off.

    DirectPrefs - Astute Graphics

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 20, 2017

    Does that RJ-Graffix plugin already work in CC2018?

    Ray Yorkshire
    Ray Yorkshire
    Participating Frequently
    October 20, 2017

    I can only speak for myself, but the 2017 link is working on my windows 7  Ai 2018

    dclevela3130w7
    dclevela3130w7
    Known Participant
    October 20, 2017

    well, it only took a year...but YEAH, thanks for fixing it, Adobe!

    U
    ulfn1604834015617271
    Participating Frequently
    October 20, 2017

    Finally this issue/bug has been resolved! Now we are able to set constrain angles and move items in that constraints! Thank you Adobe!

    C
    calumb78400771
    Participant
    September 19, 2017

    September and its still a problem

      J
      johnils1
      Participant
      August 9, 2017

      I'm drawing italic letterforms and need to switch from the default 90° / 0° for the flat planes of the letterforms that are tangent to the base line and x-height to 55° for the slanted stems of the letters. Holding the shift key while moving anchor points or paths no longer constrains the movement to the angle set in the preferences.

      Adobe has taken a huge step backward with the release of cc2017. If anybody at Adobe is listening / reading; this is not what we are paying for.

        J
        jambojam
        Known Participant
        June 30, 2017

        June 30 and still no solution?? I guess this upgrade is worthless to me because I too work with this feature 24/7. Does Adobe even monitor this forum?

          th4rd1ng
          th4rd1ng
          Participant
          May 9, 2017

          Still an issue as of May 2017. This is a pitiful problem to have. Isometric drawings require this ability. Adobe, please fix.

            U
            ulfn1604834015617271
            Participating Frequently
            April 7, 2017

            Horray! They have solved it with the new update

            Let´s get down to busienss, finally

            U
            ulfn1604834015617271
            Participating Frequently
            April 7, 2017

            Eh no, it dint work... Some sort of placebo effect, I wanted it to work and I just got carried away...

              R
              R Marquardt
              Participant
              April 7, 2017

              I installed the latest update yesterday and I swear that at the time shift-drag did follow the constrain angle, but the arrow keys ignored it.

              I tried today (Illustrator was still running from yesterday) and changing the horizontal position of an object by shift-dragging, the arrow keys, and subtracting an X value from the Transform palette all had different results.

              170407-illustrator-constrain-angle.jpg

              Resizing with the bounding box does honor the constrain angle.

              Rotating the bounding box with the shift key is bizarre. Instead of snapping to the eight standard (0, 45, 90, etc) angles offset by your constrain angle. It snaps to multiples of your constrain angle. So if your constraint is 15°, it’ll snap to 24 angles as you rotate. If it’s 78°, it’ll snap to five angles.

              If you want to be crazy and set the constrain angle to 360°, shift-dragging to rotate with the bounding box won’t rotate at all.

                U
                ulfn1604834015617271
                Participating Frequently
                April 6, 2017

                Well this is odd, I tried 105° (the middle above 105° in the picture) and I got the same result as you did. But I noticed that the arrow keys were of alignment, the up key became left and left key became up. So when I tried 110° it worked, and then I tired 105° again and it worked.
                I can´t really say that this is the issue that you have been experiencing, but I think that my mistake was that I mistook the up key with the left key and forgot to revert exactly to the initial start, and there fore the second square was misaligned. Because now I cant replicate the issue you have been experiencing.

                R
                R Marquardt
                Participant
                April 6, 2017

                If you take 90 off the constrain angle (15° instead of 105°) the spatial relationship of the arrow keys will be more “normal.”

                No matter which angle I use (that’s not a multiple of 45), when moving objects with the arrow keys the movement is just a bit off from the constrain angle, and shift-dragging objects ignores the constrain angle completely.

                I mean, it’s only a setting that’s been in Illustrator for 30 years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

                  U
                  ulfn1604834015617271
                  Participating Frequently
                  March 22, 2017

                  There is a small fix to this; it involves using keyboard to move the object in question on the constrained angle.

                  1. Set Constrain angle as usual, Ctrl+K (Windows)
                  2. Select object and Copy and Paste in front (Make an action of this with a function key as initiator)
                  3. While selected, move object with arrow keys along constrained angle. (Side note; by holding Shift, the keyboard increments is increased, but I do not know how much though. Probably 10x.)

                  Not an ideal solution, moving objects with mouse or pen is faster and more controlled, but it works as a temporary solution until Adobe gets their thumbs out and starts handling this issue, which is a Bug!

                  Turning Smart guides on or off has not resolved the issue on my computer I'm afraid, and the solution to turn off Antivirus and Firewalls is not an option for me, as I am working in a large corporation with strict security measures for IT.

                  Hope this helps

                  R
                  R Marquardt
                  Participant
                  April 5, 2017

                  I still have objects go out of alignment using the arrow keys with Smart Guides turned off.

                  Of course it can’t be consistent. If I set the constraint to 105° (which is the angle I want) objects don’t stay aligned when moved. If I set it to 45°, they do.

                  170405-illustrator-constrain-angle.jpg

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