In Illustrator, you create and edit drawings by defining anchor points and the paths between them. Before you start drawing lines and curves, you ll find it helpful to have an introduction to the basic way paths and anchors work.
In this chapter, you ll learn to use the Pencil, Line Segment, Arc, Spiral, Rectangular Grid, and Polar Grid tools to generate a variety of paths and anchors. Figure 4-1 shows an illustration that depends on the Pencil tool.
An anchor (or anchor point ) is the end of a line segment, and it controls the curve and finish location of that line segment. The line that connects the start and end of a group of anchors is often called a path . OK, enough theory for now, time to start drawing!
Caution | The Edit Selected Paths check box option can be a little disorienting because it's sometimes hard to tell whether your Pencil tool is in a state where it will add to a drawing or edit it. Higher settings on the Edit Selected Paths slider make the Pencil tool less sensitive to nearby curves. If you find that you're often trying to draw new paths but the Pencil tool keeps editing nearby paths, increase the value of the slider. If you find that it's just too confusing to have one tool do two different things, you can turn off the editing feature of the Pencil tool by deselecting the Edit Selected Paths check box. |