Illustrator CS5

CS5

Used to manage line-work and vector based work. Very difficult to be precise and detailed – so work is often exported to Illustrator from Rhino, AutoCAD or other CAD software.
Manufacturer Adobe
Screenshot Illustrator CS5.jpg
Entities Here we will list all the Entities.

Colors and Color Swatches , Artboards , Pen Tool

Interfaces Here we will list all the Interfaces.

Guides, Grids, and Rulers , Appearance and Graphic Style Panels , Groups , Adjustment Layers , Layers

Methods Here we will list all the Methods.

Live Trace , Live Paint , Clipping Mask , Align , Blends , Repeating Patterns


Workspace Overview

Swa workarea popup.png Illustrator allows for lots of personal control over the workspace arrangement, such as panels, bars and windows. The main components consist of the following:

A. Tabbed Document Windows. Allow for different documents to be open in the same window.
B. Application bar. This bar can be hidden on Macs using the Window menu.
C. Workspace Switcher.
D. Panel Title Bar.
E. Control Panel. Displays options for the currently selected tool and the currently selected object.
F. Tools Panel. Contains tools for creating and editing images, artwork, page elements, etc. Groups related tools together.
G. Collapse to Icons Button.
H. Four Panel groups in a vertical dock.

Visibility Options

  • To hide or show all panels - press Tab.
  • To hide or show all panels except the Tools panel and Control panel, press Shift+Tab.
Selection Tool (Black Arrow, V)
The most essential tool to Illustrator, allowing you to select and move objects.
Direct Selection Tool (White Arrow, A)
Select singular objects within a group (without entering into isolation mode) or to directly select anchor points.
Pen Tool (Fountain Pen, P)
Create point-to-point straight lines, complex vector lines, or vector shapes point by point, with direct manipulation of each anchor point. Also tied to this tool are the following: Add Anchor Point, + , Delete Anchor Point, - , and Convert Anchor Point, Shift + C .
Line Segment Tool (Line Icon, \)
Draw a single line segment from one point to another, without ability to directly manipulate anchor points while drawing.
Type Tool (Type Cursor, T)
Place lines or blocks of text, with ability to edit font, size, indentation, tracking, leading, etc. Click for text line, Click and drag for text block.
Pathfinder tools
Similar to Boolean operations modeling program, the Pathfinder tools allow you to unite, intersect, exclude, etc. vector shapes.
Create Clipping Mask
A clipping mask is an object whose shape masks other artwork so that only areas that lie within the shape are visible—in effect, clipping the artwork to the shape of the mask. You can make a clipping set from a selection of two or more objects or from all objects in a group or layer.
Swatches
Swatches are named colors, tints, gradients, and patterns. Swatches can be either rasterized images or vector-based artwork and can be tiled to create an endless pattern to fill a vector shape.
Color
Fill color and stroke color can be changed in the toolbar or by selecting a swatch from the Swatch panel. Colors are built in one of the following ways: process (Pantone or another color system, typically for print), CMYK (print) color space; or RGB (web/digital) color space.

Here are also some helpful tool panels to help you get acquainted with the Illustrator user interface.