July 30 , 2000

Using the Envelope Toolbar for Perspective Objects
Using Perspective menu commands for live Envelopes

If you have been playing around in FreeHand 9, you may have come to the conclusion that the Perspective Grid is like one giant live Envelope. This is actually the truth. Anything that doesn't seem to work with live Envelopes, won't work on the Perspective Grid either. You may also notice that the controls for the Perspective Grid are similar for Envelopes as well; Release with Perspective, Remove Perspective etc.

Also noticed that while there are menu commands for the Perspective Grid, there are none for the live Envelopes, yet you can use these commands for Envelopes as well.

This may be confusing, but depending on your work habits, you can get more control over either of these features from the tips below.

Version: 9 and above

 
 


This is a simple bit of text applied to the Perspective Grid. Normally I could just use the commands in the View -> Perspective Grid menu to Remove Perspective or Release with Perspective. The added benefit of these is that you can add keyboard shortcuts to them.

 

But, did you know that if you have the Envelope Toolbar shown, you can control your Perspective objects too?

In fact, all of the buttons shown in the toolbar above, will work with Perspective objects, including the Show Map option. You can use the Release button to Release with Perspective, and the Remove button to Remove Perspective.

You can even Save, and Copy your selected Perspective object as a path to use somewhere else.

The advantages of this control, is if you run out of keyboard shortcuts to use and keep the Envelope Toolbar in view somewhere, you don't need to venture all the way to the menu unless you need to edit the grid.

 

On the flip side, you can use the View -> Perspective Grid menu commands to control live Envelopes as well.

If you do have keyboard shortcuts set, you can save yourself time from having to go to the Envelope Toolbar to Remove the Envelope from the object or Release it.

Both methods have their advantages or disadvantages. It mostly depends on what you are comfortable with... menu commands or the toolbar.