From time to time, you will need to tweak the orientation of your SymmetryWorks patterns relative to the printed page or other elements in the design. In this tutorial you will solve two such problems of increasing difficulty. First you will orient a pattern so that it is periodic in both horizontal and vertical directions. Then you will add the pattern of a different symmetry type to the first pattern and adjust the orientation of the second pattern relative to the first one. As an added bonus, you will learn to combine patterns of different types, which greatly expands the variety of designs you can create with SymmetryWorks.

Many precision alignments, including some of those discussed here, can be simply avoided if you remember to preserve the fixed orientation of the objects during your edits. The single most useful habit is to hold down the Shift key when editing the control path. You may also find it useful to employ Illustrator's grids, and especially the Snap To Grid command from the View menu, at the critical moments of creating your SymmetryWorks patterns.

However, it is equally easy to orient your pattern created without any extra precautions. Here, again, Smart Guides provide invaluable assistance. To turn them on now, choose View > Smart Guides.

Align the pattern along a horizontal line

1 Start by creating a new SymmetryWorks pattern or open the file Handles.ai that accompanies this tutorial. Locate the control path (Smart Guides outline the control path when the pointer passes over it).