Adobe ILLUSTRATOR 10 Using Manual page 92

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Defining ruler units
The large tick marks on the rulers indicate the unit of measure (such as inches), and the
small tick marks indicate increments of the unit of measure (such as 1/8 inch). When you
magnify or reduce your view, the increments of the unit of measure reflect the change in
magnification.
The default units of measure for the rulers are points (a point equals .3528 millimeter). You
can change the unit of measure to inches, millimeters, centimeters, picas (a pica equals 12
points or 4.2333 millimeters), or pixels by using the Units & Undo panel of the Preferences
dialog box or the Artboard panel of the Document Setup dialog box.
The unit of measure that you set for the rulers applies when you measure objects, move
and transform objects, set grid and guides spacing, and create ellipses and rectangles. It
does not affect the units in the Character and Paragraph palettes, which always display
size, leading, vertical shift, line width, and line dash in the units set in the Type pop-up
menu in the Units & Undo Preferences dialog box. (See
page 256.)
To set the ruler unit of measure for all files:
1 Choose Edit > Preferences > Units & Undo (Windows and Mac OS 9) or Illustrator >
Preferences > Units & Undo (Mac OS X).
2 From the General pop-up menu, choose the unit of measure you want to use, and
click OK.
To set the ruler unit of measure for only the current file:
1 Choose File > Document Setup. Choose Artboard from the pop-up menu at the top left
of the Document Setup dialog box.
2 From the Units pop-up menu, choose the unit of measure you want to use, and click OK.
You can quickly change the units of measure by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-
clicking (Mac OS) the ruler and choosing a new unit of measure from the menu that
appears.
Automatically converting unit values in text boxes
If you use a unit other than the preset unit to enter values, Illustrator converts it to the set
unit. For example, entering 3cm in a text box set to inches converts the value to 1.1811
inches.
You can also add, subtract, multiply, divide, define percentages, and perform other mathe-
matical operations in any Illustrator text box that accepts numeric values. For example,
when specifying the size of a rectangle, you can type 72 pt + 2cm for the height. Illustrator
performs the calculation and uses the result.
The following rules apply when entering unit values:
You can use the following units and abbreviations in text boxes: inch, inches, in, milli-
•
meters, millimetres, mm, Qs (one Q equals 0.25 millimeter), centimeters, centimetres,
cm, points, p, pt, picas, pc, pixel, pixels, and px.
Units are in points by default unless a different unit of measure was set in Edit >
•
Preferences > Units & Undo (Windows and Mac OS 9) or Illustrator > Preferences > Units
& Undo (Mac OS X).
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