Specifying distance between objects in Adobe Illustrator CS5

Question

As I'm placing items for a design, I find myself guessing a lot about positioning, usually I will take an item and everything else that might be similar I'll use align-left, or distribute-center. However, if I have text, all aligned left, and I want an item to be X pixels away from the end of that item, is there a way i can specify that without tapping the right arrow five times?

There might be a better way to do this, something more magical that Illustrator was born to do, so any suggestions are helpful.

Answer 1

1. Type your text.
2. Create your item.
3. Put the left edge of your item at the end of the text.
4. With the item still selected, go under Object → Transform → Move.
5. Enter the distance you need it to move in the dialog box. Clicking the Preview box is helpful.
6. You can then either align subsequent items under the first item, or select subsequent items and choose Object → Transform → Transform Again, and they will all do the last transformation (in this case, moving).

Answer 2

This can be efficiently accomplished using the Transform Palette (found under Window > Transform)

Lets say for example I want to move the yellow square to the right of the blue square precisely, in the "X:" field of the transform palette, I see that the current X center of my selected object is "267.13mm."

In order to move it exactly 10mm's I can simply type "+10" in the X field of the palette (since mm is my default unit) and it will correctly move the yellow square 10mm to the right (use negative values to move left, this works the same in the Y dimension, and also function in the W/H fields).

If I wanted to move the yellow square 10pts (not mm), the I would add +10pt AFTER the mm in the X: field.

This function works correctly with multiplication, division, an other simple arithmetic actions in most Illustrator fields.