Concept: Attributes
Difficulty level: Beginner
Attributes are characteristics that can be applied to planar objects in a drawing, including fill style, pen style, opacity, line thickness, line endpoints, and drop shadow. Fill styles include solid colors, patterns (including foreground and background colors), hatches, tiles, gradients, and images. Pen styles include solid colors, patterns (including foreground and background colors), and line types.
There are various ways to apply attributes to objects:
Use the Attributes palette to apply attributes to a selected object.
Use the Attributes palette to set default attributes that will be applied as objects are created.
Use the Eyedropper tool to transfer attributes from one object to another.
Use the Resource Manager to apply an attribute resource to a selected object.
Set up a class to use certain attributes when objects are created in that class or when the class is assigned to an existing object.
The attributes available on the Attributes palette can be customized. Fill and line patterns, line thickness, line endpoint style, and drop shadow attributes can all be adjusted; to reuse the custom attributes in other files, save them to a template file. Attributes that are resources (hatches, tiles, gradients, images, and line types) are even more flexible; they can easily be created, edited, reused in other files, shared with coworkers, and even mapped to suit a specific object.
