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Total Transformation: how to use the tools in the Transform panel — Lesson 4 Move

June 29, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

This is part 4 in this series on using the tools in the Transform panel. We’ve already covered Align, Scale and Rotate. Today’s lesson is on the 4th tab — Move. You can just click and drag your shapes around the page, but there are times you need to put something in a precise location or move it by a specific amount. That’s when you can use the Move tools.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I may receive a small commission. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials. 

Using Move By

Move By is the top section. It allows you to move a shape by a set amount — any amount you choose. Let’s say you’ve got 2 hearts you’re cutting from HTV. You’ve got them touching like this:

silhouette move

You know you want to have them 2″ apart in your design so you that can put a 1″ flower in between them. You can use Move By to move the right one exactly 2″ to the right, creating the gap you need.

Select your shape. Then set the distance using the arrow keys at the right of the numbers (that goes up in increments of 1/8″ {.125″}), the slider (1/2″ increments) or by typing in your own number and hitting your Enter key on your computer keyboard. Once that’s set, select the direction you want to move the shape by clicking on the left, right, up or down arrow.

move by

Here’s my result. You can see by this blue rectangle I drew that the distance between the hearts is now right at 2.”

heart-moved-300x118

As we’ve seen in some other options in this panel, you can keep clicking that arrow, or even a different one, to move the shape again by the same amount.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Let’s say I want to have 4 of those hearts spaced equally but rotated with the bottom peaks all pointing inward so that it looks kinda like a 4-leaf clover.

I select the heart, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD+c to copy, and then CTRL/CMD+f 3 times to paste in front. That puts 3 copies right on top of the original shape. Because they’re all stacked up, it just looks like 1. But trust me — there are 4.

stack-of-4-291x300

I select the one that’s on top and rotate it 90° clockwise.

rotate-heart-1-281x300

Now I move it over 2″ and down 2″.

down-2-over-2-300x167

With the next one down, I rotate it counterclockwise by using a -90°. I move it down 2″ again, but this time move it 2″ left instead of right.

3rd-heart-300x217

For the next to last one in the stack, I rotate it 180° and move it down only, this time by 4″.

down-4-300x195

I now have 4 hearts equally spaced because I started with them in the same spot and moved them by specific amounts.

Using Move To

The second section is Move To. This allows you to move the shape to a specific location on the page. Don’t let this scare you off, but it’s like high school Geometry. (EEK!). You move your shape to a specific location based on the X and Y axis. Don’t worry if you don’t remember that far back — moving left or right means changing the X location, moving up and down is changing the Y location.

move to in silhouette

When you select a shape, the software shows you the current location for both X and Y. But there’s something else you need to notice before you can move it correctly. There’s a small grid of 8 white boxes and 1 blue box that looks like this.

The blue box tells you what part of the shape is at those X/Y coordinates. Right now, it’s the upper left corner. That means that for my heart, the upper left corner of the bounding box is at 1.045″ from the left edge of the page (along the X axis) and 4.605″ down from the top of the page (along the Y axis).

Now that we can read that, we can learn how to move it to a specific location.

STEP 1: CHOOSE WHICH PART OF THE SHAPE

I’m going to base my location on the center of the bottom edge of my heart — so that bottom peak. I click the white box on the middle lower edge of that grid of boxes to select it. Notice it’s now blue.

silhouette move to

That means when I set the X and Y coordinates, I want the middle of the bottom side at that location.

STEP 2: SET THE X AND Y COORDINATES

We’ve told the software what part of the shape to put at a specific location. Now I tell the software what that location is. Let’s say I want it 3″ in from the left of the page and 1″ up from the bottom.

  • X is for the side to side location. So I set the X at 3″.
  • Y is for the spot relative to up and down on the page. So I set the Y at 11″.

silhouette move location

STEP 3: APPLY

Click Apply at the bottom of the panel to tell the software to move the shape. I’ve turned on the grid so you can see more easily that the bottom peak of the heart is now 3″ in from the left side of the page and 11″ down from the top (1″ up from the bottom).

silhouette move shape to x y location

As with rotating to a specific angle, clicking Apply again wouldn’t change anything. Unlike some of the other options in this panel, the shape won’t move until you click that Apply button, regardless of whether you’re inputting the number, using the slider, or using the arrows.

Other ways to move or find out a shape’s location

There are other ways to move a shape of course–

  • Select the shape and drag it to a location. This isn’t as precise, but you can use the grid or edges of the page for general reference.
  • Use the Align options to move it to the top, bottom, left, right, middle or center of the page.
  • Input the numbers and choose the part of the shape for the X and Y location in the Quick Access Toolbar. After typing in a number, the software moves the shape to the new location as you hit Enter on your computer keyboard.

You can also always look in the QAT for the location of a shape. With Smart Snapping, you can align the left edge of one shape with the middle of another. But if you haven’t updated to the version where that’s available or you just don’t like using it, you can use the information you’ve learned here to do the same thing.

Up Next

As with all the tools in this panel we’ve covered previously, being able to put a shape in a specific spot or see where it already is can save lots of guesswork.

In our last lesson of this series, we’ll go over the Shear tab. You can use this to tilt (skew) a shape. That’s a feature of Designer Edition, so if you don’t have that I highly recommend it. You can click this link to go to the Silhouette America website. Go to Shop>Software and Digital to find Designer Edition. AND — you can use the code 10OFF for a 10% discount!

Filed Under: Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: location, move, transform

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