Transforming from an Object's Center

"What?" you say. "Isn't that already possible?"

Well yes it is, via the Transform handles in FreeHand 8 and above. But, what if you don't use those, or worse, you are using an older version of FreeHand. Below I describe one of those many undocumented features of FreeHand that has actually been around since version 4.

Version: 4 and above (Mac)

You could always transform from the center of a selection of basic shapes (rectangle, ellipse) by Option (Alt) + Clicking on the center mark with a transform tool and entering values in the palette or by using Snap to Point. But it is nearly impossible with strange or irregular shapes that don't have a visual center point.

In the above example I want to rotate the middle star shape from it's center point. Since there is no visual of the center point, it makes it very difficult to determine where to click manually. Well all it takes is the press of one key to transform from an object's center point.

While the object is selected and a transform tool is chosen, hold the Control key down when you click anywhere on the document. The center point will automatically be set for that object while you transform.

This even works for extremely odd shapes like shown above. This key modifier can be used with the Scale, Rotate, Skew and Reflect tools.

There is another way of selecting the center point of any object simply by clicking on it with the Transform palette open. This however, does not help when you want to manually transform something.

For users of FreeHand 9 and above, check out the tip "Transformation Handles Techniques" for yet another method of transforming from the center of an object, and it even works with WIndows.

Who's to say how many more hidden features there are in FreeHand, but if you know of any more, let me know.