Inspiring

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Drawing and snapping to path in Illustrator

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Is there a way - a shortcut or any trick - to make the endpoint of a new path snap to anywhere on an an existing path?

I want to be able to make a path with my pencil tool and have it snap to an existing path to avoid having to go back at select it with the direct selection tool and move it afterwards...

I have installed the Dynamic Sketch Plugin from Astute, and it works OK in most situations, but I then need to make the new path a bit longer and the go back and cut it... I would be so much easier if I could just stop the new path exactly at an existing path.

Any help appreciated :·)

++michael

{Renamed by MOD}

snap to path

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Jacob BuggeCorrect answer

Community Expert

Michael,

You may say that Pencil drawing is inherently more free flow and less control than is Pen drawing where you can just snap (with Smart Guides on).

You may consider, or even try, how you would feel using the Pen Tool (taking the time to get the feel of it).

Or a feature request here to have (the same) snapping built into the Pencil, if possible:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

Jeff Witchel, ACI

Community Expert

It looks like you have Round Caps turned on in the Stroke panel. Try turning them off and everything may align the way you want. Round and Projecting Caps stick out beyond the last anchor point in a path.

See attached screenshot.

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Michael DominoAuthor

Inspiring

You are right about the round caps, but it makes no difference to the snapping issue - just that it is even more evident with the round caps - if I draw with the "normal" stroke it just gives other problems with the fitting - if it snapped perfectly, the edge would not stick out :-)

- and I would have to draw with different strokes depending on whether the endpoint is visible or not ...

++Michael

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C

chrisl41501719

Participating Frequently

I cannot fix the snap-to but,

If you are done drawing the section you're working on, you can use this work around until you have a better solution.

1. select all, copy and paste behind/in place (to keep the original in case you need it later).

2. Then select all in the new layer - Expand (fill and stroke) and unite in pathfinder.

3. Then you can delete the points that are extending the shape past the line it intersects.

This is old school method here, but it works.

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Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Snapping is indeed a good feature request.

To get rid of the lines that extend, you may try to remove them with th Shape Builder tool (Shift M).

Select all, hold down the Alt key and click on the part that you want to remove.

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Michael DominoAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you for your answers :·)

The pen tool is wonderful and I use it a lot for other types of drawing, but for these (schoolbook/colouring illustrations) the snapping to path with the pencil would be great...

I think Kurt is right - it must be a future request.

++michael

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Srishti_Bali

Legend

Michael, you can definitely share this as a feature request on the link shared by Jacob (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/) and paste it here so that others can also vote for it. This is the best way of communicating with the Engineering and Product Management teams regarding issues and suggestions so they can be implemented in future releases.

Regards!

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Srishti_Bali

Legend

Hi Michael,

Thanks for reaching out. As per your query, you are trying to join two paths. In addition to the help article shared by Jacob, you can also check out this video tutorial.

Hope it helps!

Regards,

Srishti

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Kurt Gold

Community Expert

No, I don't think that this video is going to help in that case.

We are obviously talking about drawing with the Pencil tool. The request is to get some precise and immediate snapping behaviour as soon as you are touching another path with the Pencil tool. Smart Guides won't do it and no other snapping techniques as well.

It is a matter of a feature request.

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