- Setting Selection Preferences
- Making Selections
- Using the Clipboard
- Resizing Graphic Elements
- Positioning Graphic Elements
- Flipping, Rotating, and Skewing
- Distorting Graphic Elements
- Modifying Fills and Strokes
- Modifying Shapes: Natural Drawing Tools
- Modifying Shapes: Bzier Tools
- Modifying Primitive-Shape Paths
- Converting Shape Types
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Positioning Graphic Elements
If you aren't happy with the position of an element, you can always move it. You can position elements visually by dragging them around on the Stage with the selection tool. You can also position a selection numerically by specifying a precise Stage location in x- and y-coordinates. You can enter the x- and y-coordinates in either the (Shape) Property inspector or the Info panel.
To reposition an element via the Property inspector
With the Properties tab of the Property inspector open, on the Stage, select an element on the Stage.
The coordinates for the element's current position of the element's registration point appear in the x and y fields in the Properties tab, and a label—for example, Oval Primitive—appears, identifying the type of element selected (Figure 4.22).
Figure 4.22 With an element selected on the Stage, the Properties tab of the Property inspector reveals attributes of a selected element, including the x- and y-coordinates of the registration point. This drawing-object is located ½ inch to the right along the horizontal axis and ¼ inch down the vertical axis.
- To position the element, do one or both of the following:
- Enter a new x-coordinate for the element's position along the horizontal axis.
- Enter a new y-coordinate for the element's position along the vertical axis.
Press Enter to confirm the last coordinate value you entered.
Whenever you tab to or click another field, or press Enter, Flash confirms your change, and the element moves to its new position (Figure 4.23).
Figure 4.23 Changing the x- and y-coordinates in the Properties tab of the Property inspector changes the location of a selected element. This arrow is now located 1 inch to the right along the horizontal axis and ¾ inch down the vertical axis.
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How Flash Tracks Elements
To keep track of an element's size and position on the Stage, Flash encloses each element in a bounding box—an invisible rectangle just big enough to hold the element. Flash then treats the Stage as a giant graph, with the top-left corner of the Stage as the center of the x- and y-axis (Figure 4.24). The units of measure for the graph are those currently selected in the Document Properties dialog (to learn more about document properties, see Chapter 1). The Property inspector and the Info panel display information about the size of the element (the width and height of the bounding box) and the position of the element (the x- and y- coordinates for one important point in the element).
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Figure 4.24 The dotted line here represents the x-y axis of the Stage. The origin—the 0 point both horizontally and vertically—is the top-left corner of the Stage.
By entering new values for Height and Width in the Properties tab of the Property inspector or the Info panel, you can change an element's size. By entering new x- and y-coordinates in those panels, you can change an element's position on the Stage. (For more information about resizing elements, see "Resizing Graphic Elements," earlier in this chapter.)
Depending on which panel you use to enter values for an element, you can use either of two points to position an element: the registration point or the transformation point. For merge-shapes, drawing-objects, and primitives, the registration point is always located at the top-left corner of an element's bounding box. For symbols, you determine the location of registration point, which stays the same for all instances of the symbol. For shapes, text fields, and groups, Flash places the transformation point at the center of the bounding box; for symbols, you get to place the transformation point wherever you like; you can position the transformation point differently for individual symbol instances (see Chapter 7).
The Property inspector always tracks elements by the registration point. The Info panel allows you to track elements by either point. You choose the point by clicking the Registration/Transformation icon to toggle between the two tracking styles. When a crosshair appears in the top-left corner of the icon, the Info panel settings position and size elements by the registration point. When a circle appears in the bottom-right corner of the icon, the Info panel settings position and size elements by the transformation point.
When you use ActionScript to dynamically move symbols at runtime, Flash always uses the registration point to position them.