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Known Participant
November 24, 2022
Answered

change default preset setting art board unit from points to pixel or inch

  • November 24, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 8730 views

Maybe it's just me, but I have never used Points as unit in the 20+ years I have been using illustrator.

I use Inches. occationally i get documents in CM and now a days I often work in Pixels. But Never Points. (save for Font size)

 

It would be nice if we could change the default unit for the print tab.

Correct answer Doug A Roberts

while that Might be true, it misses the point. We're not simply asking HOW to make Illustrator better for ourselves we're asking that they FIX it for everyone for now and always on items that Don't and Never made sense. 

 

Illustrator isn't InDesign or a word processor, as such, Hyphonate should have been defaulted off since the beginning. My guess is, it was default on 30 years ago to be like "look what we can do".


As for points, until grade schools default to teaching kids Points instead of cm/in, no one will use it. There is no need to be stubborn about it, just drop it. I gaurantee, anyone that uses points will understand. Like Latin, it's a dead language. No one will fight you to make it the default. (imagine that!)

 


quote

while that Might be true, it misses the point. We're not simply asking HOW to make Illustrator better for ourselves we're asking that they FIX it for everyone for now and always on items that Don't and Never made sense. 


By @chrisdpage7717237

 

Have you submitted a uservoice request?

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

 

There are a few relating to document profiles and default settings already if you wish to vote for those instead.

2 replies

Known Participant
December 2, 2022

Picas used to be the print industry standard for document size and there are 12 points in a pica. It may be that because the imperial measurement is more of a U.S. thing and Adobe is global now which makes US measurements the minority. Adobe used to have a "persistent" option which I can no longer find. Also in the art board dimensions in the control panel at the top where you used to be able to key in 11 inches (to change whatever pts.) and it would change the document and the ruler to inches, no longer works in the most recent update (it changes the size of the art board, but it converts it back to points immediately).  The easiest thing at this point (no pun intended) is to change the ruler like Monika suggested. I tried saving a new workspace with inches, but it didn't stick either. 

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 2, 2022

It's not in the workspace, but in the document. The unit is a document based setting.

Chanfe the new document profile.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 24, 2022

Edit your New document profile accordingly.

Known Participant
November 24, 2022

Hi Monika,

I tried what I think you were suggesting. 

Users/ -> /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator 27/en_US/New Document Profiles/Print.ai

I opened this file. Changed it to Inch, and saved it. moved the old Print.ai file to another folder. and placed the new Print.ai in that folder. Quit and restarted Illustrator. clicked on the Print Tab, and it was still points. I opened the Print.ai file to be sure it wasn't rewriten and it's still Inches, so I don't think that's the right file. I'm not sure this is something we can change. 

 

Anyhow, it's a feature request so that we don't need to do that EVERY time we open a New document for the rest of time. There might be people out there that use Points (im guessing outside of NA) I'd love to see a poll. (is that something we can do here make a Poll?)
Anyhow, developers are always looking for ways to minimize unnessary clicks. This seemed like one of those opportunities. A subtle change to give users the choice to save the preset defaults in each tab as "X"

 

If this is something that can already be done, I might need a little more direction, but if that is the case, perhaps Adobe could do a better job of showing users that it is possible. 

thanks.

Doug A Roberts
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 2, 2022

Sorry monika, I think you may still missunderstand the request. 

This Dialog box. The Print Tab (not a file) defaults to Points. It should default to inch (or CM if so inclind). No one in history has requested a poster, postcard, letterhead in ###points wide by ####points tall. that's not a thing. Likewise, designers don't suggest back to the client, how many points they'd like their product to be. 

 

Points are used for Fonts. Not length x width.

 

Sure, you could say it's a little petty of me to complain that I need to change this setting every time I make a new document... but so does everyone else, and if we don't / forget we end up changing the settings within the document.

 

This dialog box to me is part of the application, not default files. I could be wrong, but either way, this is where I am suggesting they make the small fix I am asking for. 

 

I hope that makes sense now. 

 


Just did a quick test: create new doc from the 'Letter' preset (from the Print profile, units in mm), changed document units to feet, saved test profile to document profiles folder. As expected, the test profile appears in feet on the new document window:

Without any other info I would guess that your Print profile has been changed to points, but you said you tried changing it to inches and it didn't work, right?

 

Do other profiles have the correct units -- Web in pixels, for instance?