Discovered a keyboard shortcut in Illustrator that saved me 30 minutes on a repeating pattern job

I was working on a pattern fill for a tshirt design last night, and I kept having to manually duplicate and align tiles. Felt dumb for like 2 years not knowing this, but holding Shift+Alt while dragging with the Selection tool clones AND snaps to grid. Finally got it done in 20 minutes instead of an hour. Anyone else got a basic shortcut they slept on forever?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordangibson6d ago

47 layers deep and I realize I've been using the Transform Each panel like a chump. @thompson.xena you're not alone, I once spent a whole evening manually stacking circles for a polka dot pattern because I forgot that dragging with the Selection tool can also duplicate. Felt like I invented a new kind of stupid that day. Now I just pretend I knew the shortcut all along too.

thompson.xena7d ago

Welp, add this to the list of things I learned way too late and now feel personally attacked by Adobe for not telling me sooner. I spent like three years manually nudging tiles with the arrow keys like some kind of prehistoric designer, so this hurts on a spiritual level. Next you'll tell me there's a secret shortcut that also makes coffee and formats my hard drive, and I'll just have to accept my fate as a tool-dummy. Honestly though, thanks for sharing, because I'm definitely giving this a try tonight and pretending I figured it out myself.