illustrator CC how to manually resize one object to match another

[neuralized]

hi, i often want to manually resize one object to be the same height or width as another. in CS6, there was a "line" that would appear when drawing or resizing an object when it lined up with another nearby object. i can't seem to activate this now i'm in CC. how to do? tx!

[jane-e · Accepted solution]

Hi

That "line" is called Smart Guides. You can enable it from the View menu or with the keyboard shortcut of Cmd+U.

[neuralized]

thanks!

[jane-e]

You're welcome, Neuralized, happy to help! 

~ Jane

[rcraighead]

If this is something you do regularly you could use this script to scale the top object to match the bottom object dimensions.

//by Ray Craighead
//Select 2 objects. Script will scale top object to match bottom object.

function scaleTopObject( ){
    var aDoc = app.activeDocument;
    var sel = aDoc.selection;
    var topObj = sel[0];
    var botObj = sel[1];
    topObj.width = botObj.width;
    topObj.height = botObj.height;
    }

if (selection.length == 2) {
  scaleTopObject( );
} else alert ("Select 2 object. Top object will scale to match bottom object.");

Here's a JSX file that can be placed in your "/Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/Presets.localized/en_US/Scripts" folder. After restarting Illustrator it will appear in "File>Scripts" menu.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlos0sb7d193r43/scaleTopObject.jsx?dl=0