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When I hold option (alt) and shift in Illustrator when using the Scale tool with an anchor point that is on a distant vanishing point, I have to move the mouse while click-holding and move it until I get what I want- for it to scale proportionally. Is there some setting that I can set that disables scaling along the x or y axis? I don't want to scale along the x or y axis. I just want it to scale proportionally towards the vanishing point (anchor point).

This is extremely tedious and frustrating because I have to click and hold, and hold shift and option, and move the mouse in every possible minuscule area until I get what I want and it takes half an hour to accomplish this. How do I disable scaling along the x or y axis? I just want it to scale proportionally towards the anchor point.

https://youtu.be/-Jwyi-IL5A4

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    You can not. Offcourse you might be better of typing the scale factor
    – joojaa
    Apr 12, 2019 at 15:36
  • @joojaa Am I using the perspective grid or did I manually drag each and every guide you see by hand? (for clarification: I am not using the perspective grid 😎)
    – stapmoshun
    Apr 13, 2019 at 14:34
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    I stand corrected
    – joojaa
    Apr 13, 2019 at 14:40
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    Now if you really want to do this then you need to have a in house programmer make you a new scale tool. All that we on this forum can do is implement a workaround. And in this case the workaround is to use extrude and bevel. But that too is not a workable solution for the next case, because while extrude works it is not going to work if you need to have several walls in the same perspective.
    – joojaa
    Apr 13, 2019 at 15:13
  • @joojaa Thanks for your input. The layer that was giving me this trouble was layer eighty-five; what set this layer apart from the other layers and rows of bricks was that it was almost perfectly at 90 degrees (or at least the guides helping me at the top and bottom of the bricks were nearly straight) so it was hard to click and drag to get it to scale proportionally, instead of aligning to the x or y axis. Holding alt while on the scale tool, clicking vanishing point and inputting 99.123% and doing command-D kind of helped, the bricks look a little weird/aren't perfect but it works. Thank you
    – stapmoshun
    Apr 14, 2019 at 1:28

2 Answers 2

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If I guess right, you have something like this:

enter image description here

The colored lines are the actual drawing and the black ones are help lines towards a vanishing point. You have got drawing 1, you want drawing 3, but scaling + holding shift makes 2.

You do not want simply scale everything, because there's also something else in the drawing which is not shown here. The help lines + the unshown part must stay intact.

You can get 3. Keep the actual drawing in different layer than the help lines or lock the help lines. Learn to make selections and lockings via the layers panel.

See the green line. Its only my vanishing point marker in the actual drawing. I select all parts of the drawing that I want to scale, also the marker. Then I scale(holding shift or with Transform > Scale). I drag the top node of the marker with the direct selection tool to the vanishing point, the rest follows (see NOTE1) and everything is perfect again.

Do the same. Have snap to points and smart guides =ON, no other snaps!

NOTE1: Beware clicking anything between the scaling and dragging the marker node. If that happens, you must deselect all, select again and do the drag. Otherwise only the top node of the marker moves.

Add due a comment:

Seemingly I quessed wrong. You seem to be trying to make in the fly new bricks to be laid to a perspective image.

It would be far easier to lay a full rectangular straight view of a wall using equal bricks and then apply perspective transform to it. Simply drag a rectangular image with the perspective selection tool to the perspective grid. Keep a rectangular copy, too just in case you want to change the perspective later.

Rectangular shapes can even be extruded +rendered in Illustrator with a perspective and texture images (=placed symbols) on their surfaces. See an example

enter image description here

enter image description here

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  • Hi, could you take a look at my video that I put in the edit in my main post?
    – stapmoshun
    Apr 12, 2019 at 17:15
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EDIT: This answer was created before the OP posted a video of what they were trying to achieve, which changes the context of the question.

There is a possible work around for scaling proportionally towards an anchor point. It's a little complex, although it certainly won't take half an hour!

  1. Ensure Smart Guides are enabled

  2. Select the Rectangle tool, set a stroke and no fill

  3. Mouse over the anchor of the shape you want to scale towards

  4. When the anchor lights up, begin clicking and dragging, and then hold down CTRL/Cmd+Alt, and create a square to encompass the shape. At this point, the square will now be centred on the anchor

  5. Group everything

  6. Scale the square group using the same shortcuts as step 3

  7. Ungroup everything, and delete the square. Or alternatively select only the square, then set it to no stroke so that it remains invisible

Here's an example

enter image description here

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  • Hi, I added a YouTube video to help better explain my situation
    – stapmoshun
    Apr 12, 2019 at 17:07
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    @stapmoshun Hmmm . . . looks like you are trying to do a perspective transform. If so, then Danielilo has it covered in his answer.
    – Billy Kerr
    Apr 12, 2019 at 19:43

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