Design aids

Snapping

When dragging an object, as it approaches alignment with another object or the page, the object snaps to an alignment position, and snapping guidelines show the alignment position used.

Hold down  / CTRL to temporarily disable all snapping except for Snap to Full pixels. This allows you to quickly snap objects only to whole pixels.

Snapping options

Clicking the Snap icon in the Toolbar toggles snapping on or off. Clicking on the small arrow beside the icon reveals a menu of snapping options.

(1) Use Snapping: toggles snapping on or off

(2) Use Snap Zones: only snaps to the edge being dragged

(3) Snap to Grid: snaps to the page grid, if visible

(4) Snap to Guide Lines: snaps to guidelines, if created and visible

(5) Snap to Full Pixels: snaps to avoid positioning on a fraction of a pixel

(6) Snap to Anchor Points: uses anchor points of the selected path for snapping

(7) Snap to Shapes: snaps to shape bounding boxes and center

(8) Snap to Pages; snaps to page edges and center

(9) Show Grid: shows or hides grid

(10) Show Guide Lines: shows or hides guidelines

(11) Show Symbol Labels: shows labels on master symbols on the canvas

Use Snapping

To turn snapping off, or turn enabled snapping features on again: Press  / SHIFT +F10 or click View > Snap to > Use Snapping.

For example, if only grid-snapping and shape-snapping are enabled, only those options are turned off or on by Use Snapping.

Use Snap Zones

You can turn or off snap zones to enable or disable the snapping of the side nearest to the cursor (where the cursor is grabbing the object) and ignore other snapping possibilities.

For example, if you want to snap the top side of the shape, click the top side and drag; if you want to snap left, click the left side and drag.