Bringing a slightly off line to vertical

[mjackson83002]

If I have a line that is slightly off axis, how do I leave one anchor point set and move the other anchor point to be perfectly on axis to it? Seems like this would be easy but I am not seeing it. 

Possibly smart guides or snap to points are causing problems since it wants to snap to the orignal position and not to a vertical or horizontal axis?

Thanks in advance.

MJackson

[Kurt Gold]

The Average command is probably not exactly what you are looking for, but you may try it.

If you want to do it with smart guides, you have to drag one anchor point to the other anchor point of the line to set it as the reference point. Then you can drag vertically downwards or upwards, following the smart guide until you meet the origin smart guide intersection hint.

It may be inaccurate or at least nerve-wracking sometimes, especially if there are a lot of other paths that interfere the smart guides snapping behaviour.

And of course you can use the Align palette to align anchor points, but as per your description you would need an additional separate object to make it work.

[mjackson83002]

It's not very graphic interface friendly, but I can copy the x or y coordinates for one point and then paste that value in the corresponding box. 

MJ

[Kurt Gold]

Based on your Scrrenshot, the Align palette would do it pretty straightforwardly.

[mjackson83002]

Kurt, I looked over the align palette as seen in the screen grab. I don't see a way to align one point with another point.  Ideally, and logically, Smart Guides would be the solution, but it does not give the small "intersect" annotations when working with points. If you can use the tools in the align palette to recreate the example, please let me know. MJ

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

Mr. Jackson,

select two or more anchor points. In the Align palette make sure that the Align to Key Anchor option is turned on.

Then use the Align buttons in the Align palette.

Note that the last selected anchor point is the key position for alignments.

[mjackson83002]

Excellent! I didn't realize the panel would change from Align Objects to Align Anchor Points. This will work for me. Thanks again, MJackson

[JessCampbell]

You maybe could also try creating a shape to use as a guide, such as a triangle. After making your shape and rotating it to the angle you want, lock it down and use it to align your other points. Maybe even go to View > Guides > Make Guides to convert the shape into an actual guide object. May also want to turn off snap to grid. 

[mjackson83002]

Jess, thanks for the suggestions. Actually, I have made guides from shapes and I've created vertical and horizontal guides to fix these kind of issues, but if I have a dozen of these issues in a design, it could take a long time and I could have a lot of guides that I shouldn't need. 

I have another program that could do this in seconds. (Turn On Axis on  with O, select the corner and grag it to about where the point should go and it snaps to the spot and I release the mouse. Hit O again to turn off One Axis) This is essentially what should happen within Smart Guides if it would recognize points.