Object Guides

While ruler guides are useful for aligning objects and providing visual reference, it is sometimes useful to have a more complex shaped guide. Another option is to use any regular path — even curves, ellipses, and so on — as a guide (called an "object guide" or a "guide path"). You can turn a selected path into a guide by clicking the Object menu, pointing to Guide, then clicking Make. You can also right-click on the object and choose Make Guide from the context menu, or press CTRL+5.

When you convert a path to an object guide, the fill and stroke attributes disappear and it appears as a thin, semi-transparent line on top of all other graphics objects. If the Snap to Guides feature is on then objects will snap to these object guides in the same way they snap to the page grid or ruler guides. (To turn this on or off, click on Snap to Guides on the View menu.)

To release all the object guides in your document so that they become normal graphics objects again, click the Object menu, point to the Guide submenu, then click Release (or press CTRL+SHIFT+5).