Participant

Answered

Is there a way to confine selections to just the current artboard?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 10, 2018
4 replies
7841 views

Is there a way to confine selections to only the current artboard?

Background: I have a document with several artboards. They're all duplicates of each other, with just slight variations. Because of this, they all share the same layers, but I want to be able to do operations like Magic Wand and Select All… but only affect the current board.

Correct answer Kurt Gold

I agree with John and I think the basic principle is already there: It's called Isolation Mode.

It would be quite beneficial if that Isolation Mode could be applied at a "per artboard" level.

C

callum_6285

Participant

Hi @gmaletic, mindful this answer’s coming in pretty late in the game, but I find simply grouping all content on a chosen artboard and then navigating into that group to be the most effective, before ungrouping when I’m done.

For instance, I’m often in a similar situation where I’ll have 10+ artboards with only slight variations between them, but all sharing the same colour palette. I’ll quickly group all content on an artboard, click into it, then Select/Same/Fill Colour (which I’ve added a custom shortcut of Option+Command+F for speed) or Select/Same/Stroke Colour (custom shortcut: Option+Command+G) or anything similar, make adjustments as needed, and then ungroup. If I need to make changes to all artboards, I can just hold Command before clicking on something to bypass the groupings (such as universally changing a shade of red). This method allows me to work on a per artboard basis, while also having convenient Group/Ungroup keyboard shortcuts for speed. May not allow for all complex operations, but it’s a good workaround for me currently and may work for you too

Monika Gause

Community Expert

You could First select on on current artboard, then inverse selection and then lock selected object. After that do whatever selection you intended to do.

But that's indeed a clumsy workaround.

John Mensinger

Community Expert

I've always thought that was a key weakness in the implementation of Illustrator's multiple artboards. The application desperately needs a preference toggle to the effect of "Confine all Operations to Current Artboard."

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ryan_edwards

Inspiring

um if you save selection it will remember the context of what artboard it was, etc... I see no weakness

John Mensinger

Community Expert

You can't save and recall a selection until you make it the first time. The weakness applies to that first time; can't use many of the Select menu commands without affecting all artboards.

ryan_edwards

Inspiring

You can save the selection(s)... and easily access them later at the bottom of the 'Select' menu... you can 'edit selection'... if you wish to change later

....another would be to add a 'note' to the layers you want and possibly run a script that looks for a particular naote

G

gmaleticAuthor

Participant

Saving a selection is a useful technique, but not a superb solution in my case. I don't know ahead of time all of the different kinds of selections I want to perform. And even if I did, it's still cumbersome to, say, select all elements of a certain color, deselect the items that aren't on the current artboard, then save it. Not to mention, if I add new objects, my saved selections become useless.

ryan_edwards

Inspiring

Setting files up like this can be a pain, but it saves in the long run.

I know sometimes there just isn't time for it though... a faster way, quick & dirty... is just loosely group content in your document... when you 'double click' isolation mode will drill down to encompass the whole group... so if you have 3 objects or 333 objects its a nice way to dynamically zip around... and you can still get granular an isolate a single shape/object if you still need.

gmaletic wrote
....still cumbersome to, say, select all elements of a certain color, deselect the items that aren't on the current artboard, then save it. Not to mention, if I add new objects, my saved selections become useless.

If you save selections and then add some more stuff to your file... I would just run that old selection that is saved... that's going to get all the old stuff... now shift+click the new stuff... save a new section named something similar...v2. No need to make selections from scratch every time you add something... hope that helps out.

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