How to distribute designs evenly around the page: Method #8 — Align tools

Here we are in our last lesson on how you can space your designs space evenly in Silhouette Studio. If you haven’t read the others, then you can start here. Today, I’ll show you how to use the align tools to distribute your images equally on the page.

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Using space horizontal and vertical

(I know — grammatically it should be horizontally and vertically, but I’m using the actual wording in the software. It does make me cringe!)

It’s actually very simple to do this method using either the Quick Access Toolbar or the Align tab of the Transform panel. Here’s how–

1. Select all the pieces you want to space apart.
2. Click the space horizontal or space vertical option in one of the 2 places mentioned.
3. There is no more. That’s it! Easy peasy, right?

Here, I’ve used the space horizontal on the second row of shapes.

What you’ll notice is that the distance between the bounding box for each shape is the same.

Pros of this method

• It’s very quick and easy.
• It works really well when you know you have a set amount of space to work in. For example, let’s say you want to place 2 of your images close to the left and right edges of the page and then space the others equally between them. You place those first 2 and then with 1 click space the rest apart.

Cons of this method

• You can’t set a specific amount of distance that you want between the objects. The software determines that for you.
• It only works on 1 row or column of images. If you try to select different rows/columns, it doesn’t work right. When I select both rows of my doily shapes and try to space them horizontally, this is what I get–
  
• As when working with most text, it’s the size of the bounding box that counts and not of the actual words. Here, I’ve got 2 text boxes and 3 designs and I’m showing you how they look both before and after I space vertically. It’s pretty clear that the space around the words within the text box is affecting it.
  
  The distance between the bounding boxes is the same (they overlap by the same amount), but the elements themselves do not look equally spaced. You can convert the text to a path, but just remember that it is then no longer editable text.

That’s the end of our series! I hope you’ve learned some new things. Be sure to check out that post on aligning images as well, as it is the first in a series about all the tools in the Transform panel. They are VERY helpful.