Is there a way to ensure arc handles match an angle?

[Kris Hendershott]

WAAAAY back when, Freehand had a button that you could click to ensure that the handles of an arc between two straight lines would precisely match the angles of those straight lines... you could pull them longer or shorter, but stay locked to that angle. Is there something similar in Illustrator now? Or am I just stuck eyeballing it? (It's driving my OCD crazy.)

Screengrab attached for reference.

Thx

Kris

[Kurt Gold]

Unfortunately, Illustrator does not provide that FreeHand thing.

You can use the Scale tool and – Smart Guides enabled – use the Uniform smart guide to get something similar.

[Sepasoft_jazz]

Have you tried using the Anchor Point tool and clicking on the anchor points you want the handle to conform to? I do that from time to time, but am not completely understanding your question, but hope this will help you -jazz

[Kurt Gold]

The Convert Anchor Point tool won't help in this case. Probably you never used FreeHand and therefore do not understand the request.

Using the Scale tool is the only way to get a similar behaviour with Illustrator's native tools. More complicated, indeed.

[Monika Gause]

You are referring to connector piints?

You could try the plugin VectorScribe to have them.

[santijazz]

For this you can:
1) copy each straight segment with the white arrow then paste them on another layer
2) while holding Shift, enlarge each one with the mouse using a corner handle from their bounding boxes - like this they will retain their angles

3) snap the handles to the new guides