ZTools Tutorial

 ZTools cursor tools

Cursor tools are found in the tool pallet. Unless it was moved, the pallet is usually on the left side of the Illustrator window. If you cannot find the ZTools tools, click the “…” at the bottom of the pallet and find them in the section under “Add-ons.”

These tools work like the Illustrator arrange menu items except they act directly and immediately on artwork objects. There is no need to select objects, go through the menu or remember shortcut key sequences. Choose a tool Move to top, Move to bottom, Move forward or Move backward and click the object you want to adjust. It moves immediately and you can go on adjusting object depth.

Move to top

Use this tool to move objects to the top of their current layer or group if you are in isolation mode. No need to select the object. Just click the object once and it moves to the top.

Move to bottom

Use this tool to move objects to the bottom of their current layer or group if you are in isolation mode. No need to select the object. Just click the object once and it moves to the bottom.

Move up

Click once and the object moves up one position in the stacking order. Click multiple times to move the object up one position at a time.

Move down

Click once and the object moves down one position in the stacking order. Click multiple times to move the object down one position at a time.

 

ZTools control panel

Open the control panel by going to the Illustrator menu at Window > ZTools.

The control panel has several tools that work from an Illustratr selection. This allows the tools to act on many objects at once. As with the cursor tools, the panel controls treat grouped objects as a single object. Use Illustrator’s isolation mode to adjust object depth within a group.

The top row of buttons set the ZTools mode. The second row are direction options that work with one of the modes. And finally, the third row sets the starting position for the adjustment result and it works for two of the modes. Let’s look at the modes and option in greated depth.

Reverse position mode

Select two or more objects choose reverse and click Apply. The selected objects exchange depth positions. The top object becomes the bottom and the bottom moves to the top. If there are more than two selected, the next top-most object moves to the position just above the bottom and the previously second bottom-most object moves to just below the top. Any number of objects may be selected and reversed in this way.

Drawing position mode

You can use the relative position of objects from left to right (x-axis) or top to bottom (y-axis) to set the new depth position of selected objects.

Left-to-Right option starts ordering the objects starting with the left-most object. The second left-most object moves to the second depth position and so on. There are options for Top-to-bottom , Right-to-left and Bottom-to-top . Once the sequence is determined by the drawing position option, the  object order option sets whether the new depth sequence starts in the front or the back of the stack up. There are two buttons that determine the direction of the sequence. The Start in front and Start in back  buttons set this behavior. All this means is that whatever order the drawing position sets up, it starts in front and moves backward or starts at the back and moves to the front.

Move in front of key art

To use this adjustment mode, make a selection (two or more objects) and make one the key. All selected objects are moved in front of the key object. The order of the objects reletive to one another is unchanged.

Move behind key art

To use this adjustment mode, make a selection (two or more objects) and make one the key. All selected objects are moved behind the key object. The order of the objects reletive to one another is unchanged.

Selection order

Choose selection order mode and start selecting objects in the order you want them stacked. You may drag a selection or add objects to the selection holding the shift key until all desired artwork is selected. The order you select the objects is the stacking order. This mode makes use of the object order buttons to set the sequence direction of the arranged objects. The Start in front and Start in back  buttons set this behavior.

When the Selection Order mode is used, the plugin tracks every change to the selection to determine the order you want to arrange objects. On slower systems, this could take some processor time away from other tasks so, this mode cancels itself when you clear the current selection by clicking on the document or artboard without holding the shift key. This means that you may have to choose the Selection Order mode again to begin selection order processing.