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I'm drawing a bus line map. On some streets several bus lines pass together, so parts of the lines should be parallel and on a uniform distance from each other.
Ideally, I would like that when I draw a second line along the same street, it would snap automatically at a distance of X pixels away from the first line. Is this possible?
Notes:
Step 1: Draw your image. Then start adding as many contures/lines in the "appearance(?)" toolbox as you need. These lines are layers inside a single line layer. Treat them as such. You can add a new line/flat/whatever-layer directly in the appearance toolbox at the bottom. Exactly as you're used to in your layer toolbox.
Step 2: Adjust your line-layers. As you can see I added three layers. One for the dashed middle line (don't know why I wrote dotted), One for the flat in light grey and a third one in dark grey for the borders.
Step 3a: Transform your single line layer into a grouped lines layer.
Step 3b: Result.
Step 4: Now tranform your lines (one after each other) into flats. It's a one-click-per-layer step.
Step 5: Then select them in your layers toolbox Alt/Cmd + left click and drag & drop them out of their group. You should now have three layers above each other. Now you can do whatever you want to the edges of your new flats.
If you need parts of the path "_parallel" with an offset, go with the following. Then cut the offset path to only leave those parts that you need. Glue those peaces with your other path parts together.
Footnote: If you're using this tutorial, due to the cc-license, on your homepage, please be so kind and link back here. It's highly appreaciated. Thanks.
Illustrator uses points, not pixels.
I don't know of any automated way to snap to a point that is X points from another edge. The easiest I can think of is to turn on Smart Guides and Snap-to-point. The Smart Guides will snap at an intersection and then you can walk your anchor back a few points.
