Set shapes as child and parent objects for dynamic box designs

[G.Shemesh]

I'm working on box designs in Illustrator for a long time and it works great when it is built from the center to the outside. For example, a main shape for the box front/bottom face which is the interior of the box (considered as the parent object). And then working along to the side spines which are aligned to the main shape, moving forward to the wing flaps, etc (all these other shapes are considered Child objects, where each child object could also be considered as a parent of another child object). Eventually, all shapes are aligned to each other perfectly.

The only one thing I found cumbersome is when I need to change only interior size of the box (spines and wings should keep their original depth), and then all the surrounding shapes need to be re-aligned to the main interior shape. This becomes more cumbersome when the box is even more complicated where child shapes have their own child shapes. Everything need to be re-aligned.

Meanwhile as a workaround I make groups of the varies child shapes which keep most of the group's shapes within in aligned, and I only need to re-aligned the group back to the edge of the interior which its size was changed.

I wonder if there's an option to tie a shape to another shape, making a parent and child objects like in 3D modeling programs, and then when the parent's shape is moved or its size is changed, the child shape will move on the canvas along with it and keep its alignment / distance to the parent shape.

Attaches a few screenshots to better describe what I mean and what I'm after.

Please note that I use Adobe Illustrator CS6 since I prefer a permanent license. If it's impossible to achieve what I'm after in CS6 then I'd be happy to know if such feature exists in the CC version.

Thanks!

[Omar.Fathy]

I think Nothing in Illustrator make the command you need. If you make a group or anything like that and scale it, everything in the group will be scaled.
You can use the snapping option to help you.

[G.Shemesh]

Thanks for the reply.

Exactly regarding scaling. As for snapping - I use it a lot and it's very useful. Thought perhaps there's an option to make things simpler so shapes will remember to which shape they were snapped to. Maybe Adobe will consider this as a feature request...

[tromboniator · Accepted solution]

Please go to uservoice  to submit a feature request. That is where engineers will see it and others can add their comments and/or support for such a feature. This forum is primarily user-to-user, so we can't directly help with development action.

Peter

[G.Shemesh]

Thanks Peter.

I went to the uservoice and tried posting a feature request. However, after writing everything and clicking "Post idea" the button clicked but nothing happened. Tried it a few times for no avail. But anyway, since I'm not planning to pay for subscription plans but only for a permanent license which doesn't exist anymore, I don't think it will make any different for me. I only thought that my CS6 version has a feature I'm missing or that perhaps there's an external and affordable plugin which can be added to it to achieve what I'm after.

Thanks again!

[Monika Gause]

There is no plugin that does this. Well, maybe ESKO suite.

Apart from that: most plugin manufacturers no longer support CS6.

[Egor Chistyakov]

Monika, I feel the link you found should be added here also:

http://westonthayer.com/writing/2016/07/27/layout-experiments-in-adobe-illustrator/

I already commented at UV about it also.

[Met1]

That's cool!