Illustrator help with guides and boxes

[simplemedia]

Hello Illustrator fans,

My name is Dylan, I am new to Illustrator and struggling with a logo design. I know what I am trying to create, but I'm having trouble creating it.

Here's my situation:

I have started a new file that is 400 x 200. Inside this file, I want a series of boxes that line up with each other.

I have created guides where I want the boxes to line up - a vertical guide at the 300px mark (x-axis), and horizontal guides at the 70px and 140px pixel mark (y-axis). I then went ahead and used the box tool to create my boxes.

But it seems really hard to get my new boxes to line up to my guides. I can't find any "snap to grid feature", so I having to line things up by eye. (And the more I zoom in, the more I realize I'm not lining things up exactly.)

Also it seems difficult to get my boxes the exact dimensions I want by eye - I try to resize my boxes to 75px tall, but they come out to 75.43 pixels tall or some other incremental number.

I guess my question is: how do I line my boxes up to grids, and/or how do I carefully control the size of my boxes?

Thanks much for any help!

 

[apepp]

...use the align palette functions (window > align), smart guides can also be helpful (view > smart guides)...

...with the rectangle tool, click on your artboard area and a dialog will pop up to enter values, further controls are in the transform palette...

...consider updating illustrator to CS 12.0.1 ( I assume you are on CS2) if you are having trouble with the dimensions input...

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...another way is:

1. Select all the objects you want to align

2. Hold Alt-key (double arrow will appear) and select the reference object
(it shoud be from already selected objects)

3. Choose the type of alignment in the alignment pallete

Andrew

 

[apepp]

adobe updates are here:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

Andrew