Layout Tool

The Layout Tool is located in the vertical bar on the left of the Viewer. This toolbar lets you quickly position multiple layers or Shape Paths according to various distribution or alignment rules. It consists of a set of buttons in the options bar at the top of the Viewer, as well as an interactive placement tool.

Selection Process and Tool Interaction

Once you have enabled the Layout Tool:

There will be a blue frame indicating the selection you have made. You can use the frame handles to stretch or compress the frame to modify the spacing between layers.

Note:

Doing this with the 2D Transform Tool would have modified the Scale of the layers. Here, the Layout Tool allows you to apply changes only on the position of the layers.

Layout Frame

This first menu defines the frame in which the selected elements will be aligned, distributed, or stacked.

Align

This section contains a first parameter that defines how layers should be positioned in relation to the reference frame.

Here's an example of left alignment, according to composition format, with each of these three options. Format clipping has been disabled to see what happens outside the format.

The next six buttons align the elements that make up the current selection, based on their Bounding Boxes.
All are aligned to:

The video below shows these six functions in Composition / Interior mode:

Distribute

This section contains two sets of four buttons to distribute the current selection within the reference frame. The first four buttons are for horizontal distribution, the next four for vertical distribution.

The first four buttons are described below:

For the following four buttons:

The video below shows these height functions in Composition / Interior mode:

Stack

These six buttons stack elements next to or on top of each other, depending on their Bounding box, and push them towards one of the reference frame's edges. The goal is to remove any gaps between the Bounding Boxes, then move the entire selection to one of the edges of the reference frame.

From left to right:

Stacking With Rotated/Skewed Layers or Paths

Many of these functions are based on Bounding Boxes, especially stacking operations. Transformation parameters such as Rotation and Skew can affect the appearance of a Bounding Box.

The original horizontal and vertical edges now have a different orientation, and the real Bounding Box that will be used during the layout frames this post-transformation content. Here in the dotted line section you can see the actual Bounding Box that will be used during layout.

If elements have been transformed, some stacking operations may leave gaps.

Note:

In a Shapes Generator, that's the difference between using the tool to move points and the one to change transformation parameters.

Mirror

This mirrors elements of the current selection horizontally or vertically.

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