Arranging, locking, grouping and expanding in Vectornation
Vectornation by Zaweba locks and hides with Illustrator shortcuts, groups and expands artwork, flattens transparency and pastes in front, behind or in place.
Keeping a drawing organised is half the work of making it. Objects that are grouped sensibly, locked when finished and hidden when in the way make every later edit easier. Vectornation by Zaweba covers this housekeeping in the Edit and Object menus with lock and hide, group, Expand, Flatten transparency and a set of paste commands.
Lock and hide use the shortcuts people know from Illustrator, which makes the switch easier for anyone moving across.
Lock and hide
Locking an object stops it being selected or moved. It is the simplest way to protect finished work: lock the background, the frame or a traced reference so that clicks land only on what you are working on.
Hiding an object takes it out of view without deleting it. Hide a busy layer of detail while you work on what is beneath, or hide alternative versions of a design and show one at a time.
Group
Grouping keeps related objects together, so they move, scale and rotate as one. Group a logo's parts, a character's features or the elements of a button. You can still get inside a group with isolation mode or the Group picker, so grouping costs you nothing when you need to edit one part.
Expand and Flatten transparency
Expand turns live things into plain artwork. Live effects, live shapes, strokes and repeats are flexible while you work, but some jobs need fixed paths: a cutter file, a file for another program, or artwork you want to edit point by point. Expand makes that change.
Flatten transparency deals with see through artwork. Transparency and blending look good on screen, but some older printing workflows and programs handle them poorly. Flattening turns the transparent areas into plain artwork that looks the same without relying on transparency.
Both are one way changes, so keep an editable copy before using them.
Paste in front, in back, in place, or on all artboards
Ordinary paste drops a copy where it lands. The other paste commands are more precise. Paste in front places the copy directly above the original in the stacking order, and paste in back places it directly behind. That is ideal for making a shadow or a highlight that sits exactly over or under a shape.
Paste in place puts the copy at exactly the same position, which is useful when copying between documents or layers. Paste on all artboards places a copy on every artboard in the document, perfect for a logo, page number or footer that appears on every page of a multi page design.
Good organising habits
Lock as you finish. When a part of the design is done, lock it. It saves accidental nudges later.
Group as you build. Grouping each finished component keeps the file easy to navigate, especially in large illustrations.
Expand late. Keep things live for as long as possible, and expand only when the next step needs it.
Name and order. Keeping the stacking order sensible, background at the back and type at the front, makes selection and editing straightforward.
How it fits with the rest
These commands work alongside layers, the Select menu and isolation mode. Locked and hidden objects are skipped by selection tools, which is usually what you want. Pasted copies behave like any other object. Expanded artwork can be cleaned with the path commands and Fix this file.
Small habits with these commands make large files in Vectornation by Zaweba far more pleasant to work in.
