When you use a software package for a while you begin to notice that there are plenty of shortcuts available that are not ordinarily listed in instruction manuals or even on sites.
One of these that I found out solely by accident today is centering. We used to use FlexiSign to design signs, and it’s a powerful package in its own right but Illustrator is better suited for our purposes.
Centering however, became an issue. In Flexi all we’d do is select a group of elements by clicking and ctrl-clicking then click one button to center it all or right align, left align, and so on. Easy. In Illustrator you’d select your elements, go to the align box, use the dropdown menu and select the align by object then go back to the drawing board, select the object, then back to the panel to select what alignment you wanted like center, left align and so on. Very laborious especially when you’re used to two steps.
Today I found a quicker way. You select your objects in the drawing board by click then ctrl-clicking, release any held button then left-click on the object to be aligned against (rather than use the dropdown menu in the panel), then click on the relevant alignment button. SOO much easier.
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