Move To and Move By in Silhouette for spacing designs

In today’s lesson in our series on spacing your designs evenly around the page in Silhouette Studio, I’m going to show you how you can select an object and move it by a specific amount to or to a specific location. (If you haven’t read the previous lessons, you can start the series here).

This method can be helpful if you’re using different images. It’s also great when you know you need your design to be in an exact spot on the page. It can be a little clunky, so it may not be one you use all the time. I’ll be honest and tell you it’s not my favorite. But by learning all the different methods, you’re actually learning a good deal about the software and you might use the concepts on other files.

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“Move To” to space out designs

We’ll be working in the Transform panel today. Open that and have several designs on your page.

The Move tab is the 4th one. I covered that in-depth in this post, so read that as needed.

Here’s how I find this one most helpful.

Select the shape you want to put in the upper left and move it there. For me, it’s my banner. Look up in the panel (or the Quick Access Toolbar) to see its location on the X/Y axis. We need to look at the location of the lower right corner.
Select another image (my firecrackers) and decide how far you want it to the right of the first image. I’m going to use .125.”
Change the blue box to the left side. Top, middle or bottom doesn’t matter for now. We change it because we want to specify the location of the left side of this design.
I know the right side of my banner is 6.818″ in from the left side of the page because that’s the location on the X axis. If I want my second object to be .125″ away from it, it’s left side X location should be 6.943.” (I got that by adding the 2 numbers together.) Input that and click Apply.
Use your alignment tools to align them at their tops. Or, if you want more practice, figure out the Y location of the top of the first design and set the second one to the same.
Continue doing that for all the shapes, making sure to always check the location of the blue square. For example, I put my lips .125″ down from the banner and aligned at the left. I put my USA .125″ down from the banner and to the right of the lips.

“Move By” to space out designs

Personally, I prefer a method that doesn’t use so much math! So I can decide to use Move By instead or in conjunction with Move To. With this one, you have the software scoot your images in specific increments. In that way, it’s similar to using the Snap to Grid method we learned in Lesson 1.

Here’s how you can use in with the Move To. It’s nice because it takes fewer steps.

Start in the same way by putting all your images on the page.
Use the Align tools to align them at the top and left sides. Don’t worry that it looks like a hot mess.
Check the horizontal (X) location of the right side of the shape you want to stay in the upper left. I’ll use the banner again. It’s location is still 6.818″.
Select a different shape and put its left side at the same position as the right side of the first one.
Input the amount of distance you want for your spacing. I’m going to stick with the .125″. Click the right arrow and the shape will move to the right .125″.
Continue until you have all your shapes placed.

Pros of this method

You can put your images at specific locations.
If you use the Layers feature, you can move the designs around without ever touching them. (You can actually do that with several of our methods). They keeps you from accidentally moving one.
It works great when you have different shapes or different sizes.

Cons of this method

It’s time-consuming and has several steps.
There’s math involved.
As with some of the other methods, text is harder because it’s based on the box and not the actual words.

Designs I used

Because people always ask, the designs I used here are–

Banner — This one was a free shape with one of my Cameo machines and so is not in the Silhouette Design Store.
Firecrackers

USA Flag Kiss

Flag USA

Up Next

Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could do this method in an easier way? Your wish is my command! Next time, I’ll show you how with Smart Snapping.