Smart guides and snapping options in Vectornation by Zaweba

Precise vector work is mostly a matter of letting the program do the lining up. In Vectornation by Zaweba that job falls to smart guides and snapping, which together make objects land exactly where they should while you draw and move them.

What smart guides show

Smart guides appear as you work and tell you what the pointer is over. They label anchors and paths, so you know whether you are about to grab an anchor point or the middle of a segment. They show spacing marks, which appear when the gap between objects matches another gap nearby, and measurements, so you can see distances as you drag. They also draw construction guides at set angles, which helps when you are drawing a line that should run at a particular angle or line up diagonally with something else.

Spacing marks are the quiet hero of the set. Placing the third of three cards so the gaps match used to mean measuring or using a distribute command. With spacing marks you drag until the marks appear and let go.

Controlling snapping

A Snap pop-over in the status bar controls snapping. It is in easy reach because the right snapping depends on the job. Drawing a technical diagram, you want everything to snap. Sketching freely with the pencil, you may want almost nothing to.

Among the options are tangent and perpendicular snapping. Tangent snapping lets a line touch a curve at exactly one point, which you need for belts round pulleys, lines leading off circles, or a road meeting a roundabout in a map. Perpendicular snapping lets a line meet another at a right angle, useful for dimension lines, brackets and diagrams. There is also snap to glyph, which snaps to the shapes of letters in type. Use it to line artwork up with the edge of a capital letter or the top of the x-height in a logo, rather than with the text box around it.

Jobs where they matter

Logos built from geometry, icons that must line up to the pixel, diagrams with connected boxes and arrows, technical drawings, packaging panels, and layouts with many items in rows all depend on accurate placement. Smart guides and snapping turn each of those from a fiddly job into one where shapes simply click into place.

When to switch things off

Snapping can fight you when you want something slightly off the obvious positions, for example an organic illustration or a hand-placed scatter of stars. If a shape keeps jumping to a point you don't want, open the Snap pop-over and turn off the kind of snapping that is getting in the way, or zoom in so the snap targets are further apart. Too many guides at once can also clutter the screen on very busy artwork, so it is worth trimming the options to the ones you use.

Working with the other aids

Smart guides sit alongside the layout tools rather than replacing them. Guides and a layout grid give the page its structure. The grid and isometric grids give regular spacing. Smart guides deal with the relationships between objects. The Ruler tool and the Dimension tool measure and record. Used together, they mean you rarely type a coordinate by hand.

Most people leave smart guides on all the time and adjust snapping now and then from the status bar. That balance gives you accuracy by default, with the freedom to draw loosely whenever the work calls for it.