Participant

Question

Why can I not get illustrator to not use decimals

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 14, 2018
3 replies
4756 views

Hi there,

So the problem I'm having is that sometimes when Im moving objects or changing angles of objects for example, the width or position of the object might change from an integer (say 49) to a decimal (like 49.8299) which is extremely annoying because then I'm having to go through each property of each object when im finished and finalise everything in integers. Is there a way to stop this behaviour?

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

This request has been around for many years. You can give your vote at User Voice:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/36115429-the-ability-to-design-in-only-whole-number

You didn't mention your unit of measurement, but you can try changing your grid preferences to have a high number of subdivisions. I set mine to 72 subdivisions, giving me a grid line every point. Then turn on snap to grid. You will have to change the default alignment of strokes to be inside the bounding box.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Brittney,

Maybe utterly irrelevant, but if you have Show Preview Bounds ticked in your general preferences, you may be happier if you untick.

tromboniator

Community Expert

Supposedly there have been legislative bodies that tried to make π=3. It didn't work for them either. If you look at trigonometric tables, describing relationships between angles and their sides, you will find very few integers. It's not Illustrator, it's the nature of reality. If you go back and change everything to integers your shapes will change as well.

Sorry,

Peter

B

brittneyoconnorAuthor

Participant

Tromboniator,

But widths, heights, and angles of shapes can have whole numbers. I think its arrogant of you to say you can't have a shape that has whole numbers for all of its widths, heights, and angles. I know this because I have made several icons that have purely integers for all of the mentioned attributes that I would be happy to show you. I understand that there is a difference between the angle 35.5 and 35 (obviously) and I know that changing an angle from 35 to 5 would change the shape but that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that when I move a point or change a shape, is there a way to make it only stick to using integers (forget about angles for a second)

Jacob Bugge,

Thanks for your reply, I don't see any option called "Show Preview Bounds" in the general settings :/

EDIT: I do actually see the option called "Use Preview Bounds" which I have enabled so I'll see if that helps

EDIT 2: It doesn't seem to be doing anything differently

Thanks

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Brittney,

There are cases, such as stroked paths aligned to centre, so please untick Use Preview Bounds again.

As I (mis)understand it now, if you work in pixels, you may wish to use Align to Pixel Grid / Pixel perfect art.

From CC 2017 on, you can see the options and behaviour here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/pixel-perfect.html

For earlier versions, you may select everything and then tick Align to Pixel Grid in the Transform palette, and also tick Align New Objects to Pixel Grid in the flyout options.

But you may also wish to avoid it for other work.

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