Moving section of object with Direct Selection is too constrained

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
August 16, 2018
3 replies
1831 views

I've been experienced this issue with Illustrator CC2017 and later.

Illustrator allows a user to use the Direct Selection tool to move a section of an object and constrain the angle of movement by holding down the shift key during the movement. However, older versions of Illustrator didn't require that the movement of the cursor remain exactly on the angle of the desired move. With older versions of Illustrator, a user could simply shift-drag a section of an object with the Direct Selection tool and the section would move regardless of the cursor direction, however, the angle constraints set up in Preferences would be followed. I would like to bring back this behavior. Is this possible?

This video shows the problematic behavior that AI CC2018 exhibits. Notice how the slightest variation in the cursor remaining on the desired angle results in the object's section snapping back to its origin and not moving with the cursor. Requiring that the cursor remain exactly on an angle is far too restrictive for most work.

direct selection drag - YouTube

Is there a solution for bringing back a less restrictive editing process?

This topic has been closed for replies.

C

cesaralopezAuthor

Known Participant

This issue is happening on Macintosh running 10.13.6 so all updates have been applied.

Toggling GPU setting in Illustrator's preferences, including turning on/off Animated Zoom does not resolve the issue.

Based on the replies, it sounds like other users are experiencing this issue.

If anyone has experienced this issue on a Macintosh MacBook Pro running the latest OS and updates, and was able to resolve it. Please post!

Monika Gause

Community Expert

That's an issue with smart guides used with Shift key.

Must be a bug or something. You don't need the shift key pressed, smart guides can do the job alone. Or turn off smart guides and then use Shift.

C

cesaralopezAuthor

Known Participant

@Monika Gause

Thanks for the response, however, I find the shift key is essential to this maneuver. In very complex illustrations (many overlapping or close line segments) snapping can interfere with relying on smart guides alone. And it's just much to easy to accidentally overlook a move that did not remain on a smart guide and end up with a move that is slightly angled.

Your post did get me to examine the Smart Guides preferences and I tried several combinations of settings on and off. Unfortunately, the behavior still exists. I did discover, however, that this phenomenon only happens when moving a segment outside of the original object boundary. When moving the segment inward the Direct Selection behaves as desired, but when moving the segment outward, the restriction is applied once again. Also, the exactness of the movement can be adjusted using the Snap Tolerance setting in Preferences > Smart Guides. However, this only allows a maximum of 10 points. You can see this 10 point variance at work in the video below as I attempt to move the segment outward from center.

snap in and out - YouTube