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Satori Tips and Tricks for Regular Users

# 2 Don't Constrain Yourself

By Michael Hirsh

Here's a quick one, but well worth bearing in mind....

If you create a canvas (In this case 300 X 240, for demonstration purposes), and then specify a grid, it's very easy to forget the state you left the Grid Constraints toolbar in. This forgetfulness can result in strange behaviour.

The Grid/Constraints Toolbar is in the View/Palettes menu

The spanner icon gets you into the setup dialogue

Use the "Set by Cell" option to sub-divide the canvas. Use Column and Row values of 1/10th the canvas size and you will get a grid made of squares.

Like this...	And this.

Your canvas should now look like the above, with the grid displaying automatically (The default).

Know your constraints: Grid Snap ON...	... And OFF!
This turns the Visible Grid ON...	...and this turns it OFF

Now say you wanted to paint in some parallel lines, choose grid snap ON if you want to make them all the same length, and then either choose:

Vertical constraint for vertical lines, or...	Horizontal constraint for horizontal lines.

The horizontally constrained parallel lines snapped into place with the grid. So far so good.

So now you decide you want to add a tiny green star to the end of the bottom line (Just don't ask me why)....

You hit the Zoom button.

a-a-a-nd, er, Uh-Oh! No zoom view appears! Just a straight line in the canvas window. The blue circle shows the result. What to do?

Back to the Grid/Constraints toolbar, and hit the No Constraints button. Make sure Grid Snap is turned off while you are at it, unless you want your zoom view to fit to your matrix of squares.

Now you can zoom in with complete freedom... (Note the dotted rectangle representing the zoom area)

Here's the zoom view in low resolution, so just hit the Hi-Rez button..

And now you can stick the little star in place. Aaaaah. 

Satori means: "A sudden flash of intuitive enlightenment" but the program can sometimes offer up these little "Doh!" moments, too. It pays to keep an eye on what you have just been doing, as well as on what you are just about to do. All very Zen, I'm sure.

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