Adobe CS5 Illustrator Tips for Creating Shapes

By Jennifer Smith, Christopher Smith, and Fred Gerantabee from Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One For Dummies

Creating shapes is a central function of Adobe Creative Suite 5 (Adobe CS5) Illustrator and there are some simple tips which can improve your skills at creating those basic shapes.

Press and hold the Shift key while dragging with the Rectangle or Ellipse tool to create a perfect square or circle. This trick is also helpful when you’re using the Polygon and Star tools — holding down the Shift key constrains them so that they’re straight.
Create a shape from the center out by holding down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key while dragging. Hold down Alt+Shift (Windows) or Option+Shift (Mac) to pull a constrained shape out from the center.
When entering values in a shape dialog box, you can click either the Width or Height text to match the other value. We entered the value 4 in the Height text box and then clicked the word Width to make the values match.
When creating a star or polygon shape by clicking and dragging, if you keep the mouse button down, you can then press the up- or down-arrow key to interactively add points or sides to your shape.