Constraints

Constraints hold a point at the same horizontal or vertical position as its anchor point. When a constraint is selected, Snap the anchor (start) point to a Template Point that already has an Extender ending there, then snap the moving end to the point you want to constrain to the same X or Y position. Snapping is automatic in Template. The controls visual will follow your mouse until you click to set its position. Horizontal and Vertical Constraints aren’t associated with parameters, since their purpose is to hold the endpoint at the same horizontal or vertical position as the anchor point.

Horizontal Constraint

Use a Horizontal Constraint to hold the endpoint at the same horizontal (X) position as its anchor point.

Vertical Constraint

Use a Vertical Constraint to hold the endpoint at the same vertical (Y) position as its anchor point.

Angle Constraint

Use an Angle Constraint to set or hold a corner angle to a specified value. This constraint can be associated with a parameter to set the angle, or it can hold the original angle at the corner.

Notice that the Angle Constraint has automatically added a Distance control on each of its adjacent legs. They are set to the current lengths but can be assigned to a parameter.

Placing an Angle Constraint at a Template Point limits additional controls that can be applied to the adjacent elements. The only other controls that can attach at a Template Point with an Angle control are distance controls, so Templates adds them automatically.

Using Extenders and Constraints Together

Each Template Point has an initial X and Y position. If you add a Vertical Extender to a Template Point, you are moving the point in the Y direction. If you don’t add any other controls, the X position will remain unchanged.

Here, we’ve added Extenders to the width and height of a rectangle:

The effect of applying variables will be to move the Template Points in the direction indicated. If you don’t want to move the Template Points in the other directions, no controls are needed. Both Template Points keep their original position in the direction that doesn’t have a control. The original pattern is shown in gray.

 If we want to keep the rectangular shape, we only need to add two Constraints.

Since the top left point will get its final Y position from the vertical extender, we want to anchor the horizontal constraint there and end it on the top right point. That will cause the top right point to match the final position of the top left point. For the vertical constraint, we anchor it at the point we want to match and end it at the point we want to move.