How to find center of document?

[minneola24]

Hello,

I use the guides (the lines to help you align stuff) and I am having trouble finding the center. Is ther a way to have a cross hair at the center with the guides or something because I want to allign my artwork at the center because it looks off center now.

Thankyou guys!

[Jesseham]

You have the "align to artboard" button in your align panel.

In CS3, it looks like this:

[minneola24]

Okay, I have CS4 but that button is till there. I check select to artboard and nothing happens, it gets selected thoe. What do I do after I select that option?

[Monika Gause]

This little menu just sets the reference object for aligning the objects. After selecting the artboard there you still have to click the buttons to horizontally and vertically center yout objects on the artboard.

[minneola24]

Thanks but is there an easier way of doing that because I want to center a whole piece of artwork and it centers all weird combining letters etc.

With the way you taught me I have to change that settings, create a 1:1 square, center horizontal, center verticle, create 2 guides, delete, then align my main artwork. Kind of long if you ask me.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Draw a vertical line the height  of the artboard, use the align tool to center it then do the same horizontally now they meet at the center select them both turn them into guides you can probably make and action and give it a keyboard shortcut. I tried this and for some reason I can only make this work as an action properly if I have only one artboard in the document. Otherwise it makes the vertical guide alright but the horizontal guide is over the one in the first page and you have to drag shift it. Could be a bug or a conflict or I have a corruption somewhere so you can try it and maybe it will work for you.

[_Billb_ · Accepted solution]

You should be able to just pull a guide onto the artboard from the top and side ruler and place them anywhere on the artboard.

(make sure they aren't locked)

Click the Align to Artboard

Click on a guide with the Black selection arrow, and click on the horizontal or verticle centering button

Thats it!

No need for drawing anything or actions etc. it's pretty quick and easy...

Bill

[minneola24]

Thanks!! Your the man

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

But an action would have been easier if there were not this little bug, you hit a keyboard shortcut there you are two guides to bad also that the guides are not actionable but the are I believe scriptable and I get to report two bugs and you have a satisfactory way of doing what you want.

Good thread.

[_Billb_]

Wade,

I did manage to write an action that made both guides for me and centers them in the document, BUT The "Align to Artboard" has to be chosen before the action is run. As you suspected, I would imagine the work-around is to write a script for it, so you wouldn't have to check it, or you could just have it checked already in a preset workspace that you use. I used to do quite a bit of programming, but these days I do not, so I haven't bothered with any scripting, so I guess I'll leave that little ditty up to someone else for now...

Cheers,

Bill

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

as i wrote that works with one artboard but with more than one art

board in a document only one of the two guides are placed in the new

artboard.

But I will report it and see if it ever gets any attention I think a

script is better as well.

[sana_com_au]

minneola24 wrote:
 Is ther a way to have a cross hair at the center

i was skiming through the threads others have written regards to your enquiry.  There is a way to do what you need in terms of cross hair in the middle of your artboard. double click on your artboard icon and and go to display and check the "show center mark" box.

[Yoni707]

OR YOU CAN ALWAYS CHOOSE ARTBOARD OPTIONS AND CHOOSE SHOW CROSS HAIRS FROM THERE, IT WILL SHOW THE CENTRE MARK OF EVERY ARTBOARD OUTOMATECLY.

check this out for more details.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjRrBdFkdUfBWihLUX4sBDQ?app=desktop

[David_at_Summit]

If using the align-center controls is not working or not practical in your scenario, here is an alternate way to find the orthogonal center of the artboard or any other object. Create a rectangle the same size and in the same position as the artboard or object, change the transformation anchor to any corner, then set the height and width of the new rectangle to fifty-percent ("50%"). The anchor point in the opposite corner of the rectangle is now the orthogonal center.