Align an object to the center of an other without meeting in the middle?

[ChasTheIrish]

I've used CorelDraw heavily in the past and one aspect that I really wish Illustrator incorporated was an option for aligning an object to the center of another. When you do it currently, both objects meet in the middle between their previous locations. In Corel, the first objects selected move to the center of the last object selected.

Sometimes I can get around this with groups or aligning objects to the artboard, but not always. Am I just ignorant to an option that lets me do this or is there no way to achieve this in Illustrator?

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

When selecting multiple objects, click again on one to designate it a 'key' object. Other objects will then align in relation to this one.

[ChasTheIrish]

Thank you, this does achieve the effect I desired

To do this, select the objects you wish to center, then without pressing shift, click the key object and center your objects to it.

I can't understand why the default is set to align in the middle. I can't think of a single instance where I've wanted to use that in my career. Every time I use align, it has either been to align an object in relation to another's location, or to align a set of objects to the center of the artboard.

I really wish this would be changed. The ability to select the object you want to center to in a large collection of objects is actually really nice. If it were the default, that would be better than CorelDraw's solution. At least allow the option to set it as a default if the antiquated way is kept.