Find and replace, change case and outlines in Vectornation
Tips for Find and replace, Change case, Create outlines and Find and replace attributes in Vectornation by Zaweba, for fast edits to text, colours and fonts.
Late changes are part of every design job. A product name changes, a client wants headings in capitals, or a colour needs replacing everywhere it appears. Vectornation by Zaweba has tools for each: Find and replace, Change case, Create outlines for every kind of text, and Edit > Find and replace attributes for colours, stroke weights and fonts.
Find and replace text
Find and replace works through the text in your document and changes one word or phrase for another. It is the quickest way to update a product name across a brochure, correct a misspelling that appears many times, or change a date on a set of posters.
Look at each change if the word could appear inside other words or in a different sense. A blanket replace can produce surprises.
Change case
Change case switches selected text between capitals, lower case and other case styles. It is far quicker than retyping, and it keeps the original text intact. Use it when a client decides headings should be in capitals, or when text arrives in all capitals and needs to be calmer.
For text that should always appear in capitals because of its style, such as small labels, consider whether a style would be better, so the choice is applied consistently.
Create outlines
Create outlines turns text into vector shapes. It works on every kind of text in Vectornation, whether point, area, path or upright. Outlines are needed by cutters, engravers and some print workflows, and they guarantee the letters look the same on another computer even if it lacks the font.
The cost is that the text is no longer text. You cannot edit the wording, check spelling or change the font. So create outlines only at the end, on a copy, and keep the live text version on a hidden layer or in a separate file.
Find and replace attributes
Edit > Find and replace attributes goes beyond text. It finds colours, stroke weights and fonts used in your artwork and changes them to something else. It is ideal for brand changes, when one blue becomes another across dozens of objects, or when a stroke weight needs to be heavier everywhere for printing.
It also helps with fonts. If a document uses a font you need to replace, perhaps because a client has a new typeface, you can swap it in one step.
A quick editing routine
When changes come in, start with Find and replace for wording, then Find and replace attributes for colours and fonts, then Change case for any case changes. Run a spelling check afterwards, as replacements can introduce new mistakes. Finally, if outlines are needed, make them from the corrected live text.
Common mistakes
Making outlines too early is the biggest one. It turns a two second wording change into redrawing. Always keep the live text.
Another is replacing a colour that appears in places you did not intend, such as inside a placed picture's frame or in a background. Check the results visually after any large replacement.
And when changing case, remember that some words, such as brand names, have their own capitalisation. Read through after the change and fix any that need it.
These tools are quiet helpers, but they turn hours of small edits into minutes, and they make Vectornation comfortable for jobs that go through many rounds of changes.
