Snap to Grid behavior not working?

[Westopherguy]

I recently upgraded from CS3 to CS6. To my eyes, Illustrator's Snap to Grid functionality is either broken—or I'm not understanding a (new?) option.

Use case: I set-up a grid with 1/8" spacing. I paste a 1/2" x 1/2" object from another file, or just copy and paste an existing one in the same file. I want it to sit, say, 2" from the top, and 4" from the left edge. In CS3, I could just use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the object around, and its edges would precisely snap, as expected, to the grid, with no muss or fuss. If it was an uneven size, the edges would snap, making it easy to at least align the left and top edges (for example) where I want the object to sit.

In CS6, this really just plain doesn't work—either with arrow keys, or moving the object with the mouse. The objects are always—ALWAYS—some fraction "off" in one direction or another. And yes, I know it sounds like the Snap to Grid is off, but it's not. The object moves by increments of the grid (1/8" in my example), but the object is not grid-aligned, and cannot be made to be. I can arrow-key the object all over the workspace and it won't snap properly. The only way I can find to accurately position the object is open the Transform dialog, and enter the measurements by hand.

Quite honestly, that's a pain in the butt, and it's made literally everything I do in Illustrator take roughly twice as long. This is improvement?

I am hoping I "just don't get it." That there's an option mis-set somewhere in here. Maybe it's related to moving from Windows on CS3 to Mac on CS6, who knows. What I do know is I'm starting to hate Illustrator every time I have to fire it up these days.

Anyone else see this? Anyone have any idea how to fix it? File a bug report?

ADDED:  In playing with this just after my original posting, it appears that the described issues occur only with groups of objects. For example, a 1/2" x 1/2" icon composed of a square for its outer dimensions, with some other stuff layed on top, then grouped, and moved as a whole. (Although whether it's grouped doesn't actually seem to matter—an ungrouped, multi-select of the same sort behaves the same way.)

[Larry G. Schneider]

Are you working with a file based on the Web RGB New Document profile? Have you turned off the Default Align to Pixel Grid? Do you have Use Preview Bounds set in the Preferences?

[Westopherguy]

Thanks for the response.

No, this is a print workflow, and Align to Pixel Grid is confirmed off. Use Preview Bounds is UN-checked in the preferences. (Wasn't familiar with that option; not sure if/how it impacts this off-hand.)

[Larry G. Schneider]

If Use Preview Bounds is checked then there is a chance it will snap to the outer edge of the stroke of the item. Do you have any Raster Effects like a Drop Shadow applied to any of the items in the group. It might be taking the outer edge of the raster in that case.

[Westopherguy]

Use Preview Bounds didn't help, but your raster effects question got me wondering... I am using a rounded corner effect in every instance where I have observed this. At least with a couple of quick tests, removing the rounded corner effect via the Appearance panel seems to have kicked it into expected behavior. Interesting.

I'd still make a case that this is a bug, and to the best of my recollection, it is NOT how it worked in CS3; I use the rounded corner effect pretty regularly... I would certainly have noticed this "in the old days." 

Thanks for the clue. I'll find a way to deal with this knowing where the issue seems to be. I also just filed a bug report on it; I feel strongly that it is one.

[Jasmine Lucero]

I am having the same problem and have tried the suggestions above...still not snapping to grid.

[Guest]

I've also had issues, noticed it happens when I copy and paste items from another document, if this is the case with you I have found redrawing the element in question seems to work, not ideal but hope this helps

[Jessie-vp]

Aproximately the same thing here. When selecting one anchor point I can move it anywhere I want, when selecting both I just can't make it snap to grid. Even when turning off every snapping feature that I know I still can't manually move both anchor points to a gridline...

[Andrej Balaz]

Same issues here. Illustrator no more snaps to grid. Horrible!

[Guest]

I am having the same issue. And I found that CS6 on a PC, everything seems to work fine. CS6 on a MAC, the snapping features do not work, or seem to work randomly. I can not get any path to snap to a guideline either. I have checked and re-checked everything that was stated by other members above, and I can not figure out why it is happening. It is really making me consider selling CS6 and looking for a copy of CS3. I agree with Westopherguy, I am taking twice as long to do anything.

[spdennett]

Have you checked that your artboard is aligned to the pixel grid?

To do this click the artboard tool and check the artboard is siting on a pixel.
I was having a similar issue where a group of shapes would not align at 0,0. I would type in 0 for the x position and illustrator would then overwrite that with -0.25. Aligning the artboard to the pixel grid fixed this issue for me.

Hope this fixes your issue as well.

[tomasmiskinis]

Same problem even in CC. Its very anoying.

[ZwervertCape]

I also could not get snap to grid to work - but some of my existing documents do work with snap to grid. The solution that worked for me sounds ridiculous: Make sure "Align to Pixel Grid" is unticked in the Transform Panel and "Align New Objects to Pixel Grid" is unticked in the Transform Panel Options Menu. Objects WILL now align as per the grid settings in Preferences.

You also need to make sure that "Pixel Preview" is not selected in the View menu otherwise objects will not align to grid.

[john.i.clark]

This worked for me; thanks ZwervertCape! Can someone explain the point of all the "Pixel Preview" & "Pixel Grid" settings are, in a vector drawing program?? I turned them all off, and my strokes stopped having their •edge• align with the grid instead of their center line.

Also, can someone tell me the point of the extra little selection points that appear when you hold down the Command key while a stroke is selected? Kind of looks like a variation of the Preview Bounds feature, but I've got that turned off in Prefs. Can't figure that one out at all...

[Larry G. Schneider]

The Align to Pixel grid was put in at the request of many people doing work for Web sites and the like.

[killingclipart]

I'm having the same issue. When using the pen tool my points are all snapping perfectly to my grid but none of the anchors will. I've tried all the above and none are a solution to this problem. I can't understand why this was changed from previous versions of illustrator. An update/fix has got to happen soon.

[Guest]

1. Go to Preferences » General and check "Use Preview Bounds".
2. Select the object
3. Click Transform in the upper toolbar and uncheck "Align to Pixel Grid"
4. To prevent new objects from this behaviour, also uncheck "Align New Objects to Pixel Grid" from the top-right dropdown menu of the Transform panel.
5. Finally, check "Snap to Grid" in the View menu.

[professorM]

I was wondering the same snap to grid issue. The easiest solution is to grab the symbol by the corners to snap to the grid. You can't grab anywhere on the symbol.

[john.i.clark]

Westopherguy, has your original question been answered by adjusting your "Align to Pixel Grid" settings? It would be helpful to know (and you could mark it as "answered")

Thanks,

John

[murkf81204167]

I have the same problem, but in Adobe Animate CC. My document is A4 (210x297mm) and I'm unable to snap 4x4mm boxes next to each other -- they're always off by a tiny fraction.

I did, however, find a temporary solution: Convert the document to pixels. In the case of A4 that would be 599x846px. Snapping seems to work accurately then.

[Monika Gause]

murkf81204167 schrieb:

I have the same problem, but in Adobe Animate CC. My document is A4 (210x297mm) and I'm unable to snap 4x4mm boxes next to each other -- they're always off by a tiny fraction.

Please can you discuss Animate issues in the Animate forum?

And probably your solution won't work at all in Illustrator, because Animate is made for animation design and therefore for screenbased work. Measuring in pixels simply is standard for this kind of work, which is not the case in Illustrator.

On top of that: different codebase, cannot be compared at all.

[jayb90902591]

This might sound crazy, but I noticed that it wasn't working for either, until I clicked the line/shape with the selection tool and moved it. After that, it started working. Might be a bug in the software, you have to move the object first. Also, adjusting the tolerance level will help as well.