Question about the 'paste over selection' shortcut in Illustrator that I thought was just a gimmick

Honestly, I thought the 'paste in place' and 'paste over selection' shortcuts were just for show until I had to align 50+ icons across 10 artboards last week, and using Command+F and Command+B cut my time from an hour to maybe 15 minutes, so has anyone found a better use for those paste commands in their own projects?

3 comments

3 Comments

finleybutler2mo ago

My 200-layer file agrees with @the_miles, those paste tricks are secretly the best part of Illustrator.

diana5528d ago

Wait, have you guys ever tried using paste over selection with a pattern brush? I was making a bunch of repeating border elements for a wedding invite set and it saved my butt. @finleybutler I bet you'd love this for those 200 layers - paste over selection lets you drop the exact same graphic on top of different shapes without messing up the alignment. I used it to slap a custom star pattern onto like 30 different sized circles and they all lined up perfect. It's one of those tricks that seems dumb until you need it.

the_miles2mo ago

Those shortcuts saved me when I was laying out a huge poster with tons of repeated elements!