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P. 103
Object Handling 103
The target on the left is made from three circles stacked on top of each other.
To ensure that objects overlay each other in the correct order, you often need to
rearrange their order from front to back. The front object always covers lower objects,
and objects always cover other objects which are further back. Each new object you
create is always created on top of older ones.
Right click an object and choose ARRANGE, which gives you these options:
• BRING TO FRONT ("Ctrl + F"): This makes the selected object the front object, and it will
hide any other object it covers.
• MOVE FORWARD ("Ctrl + + F"): This moves the object up a level towards the front
rather like climbing a staircase one step at a time.
• MOVE BACKWARD ("Ctrl + + B"): This moves the object one level towards the back.
• PUT TO BACK ("Ctrl + B"): This moves the object to the back.
These options move objects forwards and backwards within their layer. Right click and
MOVE TO LAYER IN FRONT/MOVE TO LAYER BEHIND lets you move objects between visible
layers (invisible layers are skipped when moving objects).
Read more in Layers (on page 447).
Rotating using the mouse
To see the rotation handles (instead of the scaling handles) on a selected shape in the
Selector Tool, click again on the selected shape.
Drag on a corner arrow. As you drag, the object rotates around the transformation center.
The InfoBar shows the current rotate angle.
"+ drag" to rotate the object around its center (the transformation center is ignored).
Hold down Ctrl while rotating to perform a constrained rotation. This means the object will
rotate to only a limited selection of angles. It will rotate to multiples of the ‘constrain
angle’ value, which by default is 45 degrees. But additionally it will include angles at
which any significant straight edges in the object are aligned vertically or horizontally.
This, for example, makes it easy to rotate a rectangle which has been rotated slightly, so
that the rectangle is straight (screen aligned) again. Or to make any straight edge in a
