Working with the grid - CP v5.5

[Guest]

Captivate v5.5

Not matter what grid settings I use, I can never get the grid to appear correctly aligned across the slide.

The below example is the grid set to 50, and hopefully you can see the left and top grid "dots" are running along the top and left of the slide but the grid dots on the right and bottom are not in the same position.

What I am trying to get to is something along the lines you have with MS Powerpoint (see below)...and what would be great in Captivate (and MS Powerpoint) if the middle horizontal and vertical grid lines were bold - that would make working with the grid so much easier.

Noel

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

Noel,

I gave up using the grid since a long time, it is not a very functional tool at all. Have been pleading to have rulers and guidelines, but not enough support for those requests I suppose. Another issue is the fact that the registration point of an object, which is used as reference for snapping, moving, aligning and resizing is always at the top left of the bounding box. Only tweaking possibility for grid is to set the grid size, which will then change at the same time the increments for resizing and moving if you use the CTRL-arrow combinations.

If you explain why you want to use the grid, maybe I could explain my way of aligning using Transform accordion and a lot of shortcut keys.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Hi Lilybiri,

I often create slides with same size images / text boxes that are placed in a symetrical order on the slide, e.g. top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right and often an image in the centre - example the 5 spades

If Captivates grid was correctly aligned it would be a quick and simple job of ensuring each object was in the right location on the slide in order to give the correct visual display.

As it is today getting the right side and right bottom objects to be the same distance away from the edge of the slide as those on the left  of the slide is not a simple quick task.

Noel

[Lilybiri]

In such a case I create my own 'guides' using the line tool I will position a vertical line at the wanted distance from the left edge using the Transform accordion for pixel-exact positioning, then duplicate that line (CTRL-D) and move the duplicate to the correct position for the right margin. Now I can use Align options to have the bounding box of the image either left align with the left liine or right align with the righ line.

The central image can just be centered vertically and horizontally with the Align menu or toolbar.

I often use shortcut keys as well to move a duplicate over exactly some distance. In this old blog post I summarize the shortcut keys and my favorite sequence of shortcuts:

http://lilybiri.posterous.com/shortcut-keys-part-1-moving-and-resizing-obje

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Thanks,

That is a useful workaround.

However - as you have already mentioned - it would be better if Captivate came with the basic tools to enable this without us having to do all the extra work.

Noel