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I work with artboards a lot, both in Photoshop and in Illustrator. I love them, particularly when creating multiple sizes of the same artwork. I also love smart guides. Unfortunately, they don't seem to love each other. When I work with multiple artboards the smart guides align to objects placed on other artboards, sometimes aligning to objects 4 artboards over.

Is there a way (or even a workaround) to limit smart guides to the current/active artboard? I found this question in a post on the adobe forum from 5 years ago, but no solution.

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I think the only way to limit what is snapped to a smart guide is changing what is in your screen view. So if you only want objects to snap to what is in the current artboard, then you need to zoom in to only show that artboard.

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    I don't know if that works, but if it does, fastest way to limit view to current artboard is Ctrl + 0.
    – Welz
    Nov 14, 2018 at 16:49
  • unfortunately, this is not the case.
    – Julian Friesel
    Nov 29, 2018 at 10:41
  • I only have 2019 still installed but I am able to snap to objects that are only in my view even though I have objects and guides in other artboards. Not sure why you're not able to. I did only test in Illustrator and InDesign.
    – AndrewH
    Aug 5, 2020 at 23:15
  • I would also recommend using the align panel and align to key object instead of manually moving the object. I find it faster once you know the shortcuts.
    – AndrewH
    Aug 5, 2020 at 23:17
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If layers are set up to be specific to each artboard (the artboards don’t share layers), then turning off the layer view for the unused artboard layers should disable smart guides from snapping to those now hidden layer elements.

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    Just to clarify: Is there a function on Illustrator to limit the layers to an artboard or are you referring to manually setting the layers up to contain only objects for specific artboards?
    – Julian Friesel
    Aug 7, 2020 at 9:03
  • The latter and manually. A layer will always span all artboards. So it’s a discipline, for example, you would just use layers 1 through 4 with only Artboard 1, and so on. Same thing for PS. Nice thing about PS is you can group the layers in folders and hide the view of the folder when not needed.
    – Peter Kleine
    Aug 10, 2020 at 16:45
  • Also, this approach to layers and artboards probably seems laborious (because it is). Some of the setting up time could be lessened by setting up the artboards and layers as needed and then making that document your startup document. This way a new doc would open with a certain number of artboards and a certain number of layers already named the way you need them to be named. You could also save as a template of course. Hope this helped.
    – Peter Kleine
    Aug 10, 2020 at 20:11
  • I appreciate the clarifcation, Peter.
    – Julian Friesel
    Aug 13, 2020 at 13:53
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I had this issue before but what I noticed is a very simple solution that makes me want to face palm myself for not discovering it earlier... So what you need to do is click on anything in the artboard whose guides are disturbing you and press Ctrl and : buttons (this will toggle on and off the guides for that particular artboard) Note: make sure you click on something in the particular artboard you want to turn on or off it's guides...

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