so I'm working with Adobe Illustrator, and I'm trying to have a rectangle pass through the center, and also snap to two points.

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Basically, I want the marked (with the black lines) corner of the purple rectangle to be snapped to the top left corner of the right red rectangle. I also want the center of the purple rectangle to pass through the center(as shown by guides). I also want to preserve the width of the purple rectangle. I can easily achieve what I am trying to do by selecting anchor points and snapping them, but I lose the width of the purple rectangle.

I've used Illustrator quite a lot, but I'm always stumped by things like this. How could I do this? There must be some tool or method I don't know about.

Thank you.


Grab the Rotate tool. With the purple selected, click once at the center guides, then click-drag at the top corner of the purple rectangle to rotate it down to align with the rectangle.

Illustrator doesn't really offer any ability to "pivot" an object on a specified axis other than this. There's no internal way to "snap" to more than one point.

... and to be fair, I'm not entirely sure if "pass through the center" indicates motion or animation of some sort.

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  • I can't seem to follow that at all, @joojaa :) – Scott Nov 21 '14 at 5:35
  • because the square behind is smaller its easier to snap to the long square at its created orientation. So rotate back square around center grabbing corner to and drag to edge then rmb select rotate and type a minus in front done. A mathematicians trick do it towards the space thats easier and compensate later. Better now? – joojaa Nov 21 '14 at 6:00

you can eyeball it fairly accurately...

  1. make a guide line along the long side of the purple rectangle's center (it might be easier to do it while it is horizontal)

  2. group the guide line and the purple rectangle

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  1. select the purple rectangle group with the Selection Tool (V)

  2. grab the Group Selection Tool (white arrow with the plus sign), click and Drag on Anchor (A) and drop it on top of Anchor (B)

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  1. grab the Rotate Tool (R), click on Anchor A (to set the Rotation point), then click and drag to rotate the purple rectangle, getting it close to the center...

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  1. zoom in real close...

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  1. and fine tune it

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  1. done.

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