By Dani Beaumont
With the new Paste to Multiple Artboards feature, you can quickly place elements across multiple artboards of varying sizes. Let me show you what I mean.
I'm here within the Adobe XD application, and I have a design element this little dial here that I want to place on additional artboards.
We can begin with the simple approach. I'll come in and select that object right-click and copy it onto the clipboard. If I then deselect and right-click to select paste, it's going to paste it in the same X & Y location. So from there, I can drag off that duplicate, and place it onto another artboard. If I want to constrain it horizontally, I can hold the shift key and that helps me align it to some extent. When I release, it's now placed on that second artboard.
Another quick way to work would be to hold Option + Shift as I press and drag the object. That will simultaneously duplicate it and constrain it horizontally. This works pretty well, but if I'm trying to create an artboard or a flow that has that object across multiple artboards. I want to be careful to make sure that it's in the same X & Y location so that it doesn't seem to jump around in my prototype.
I'll go ahead and undo what I've done here. And once again, I'm going to select the object, and copy it to the clipboard using the "Paste to Multiple Artboards" feature. I can come in and select multiple artboards. Now, they need not be sequential. I can hold the Shift key and select nearby — I'll go with alternate here — Focus alternate, IPad variation, and Android. And then in hitting CMD-v on the keyboard to paste that object, notice that it pasted on all of the selected artboards in the instance where the artboard is the same exact size.
So this one here is placed perfectly horizontally and vertically. If the artboard is larger, it's going to still select the same X & Y location beginning in that upper left-hand corner. If the artboard is smaller it's going to make it somewhat easier for me by placing the object in the center both horizontally and vertically,
Let's say I have a very large project with many artboards. One sort of safety feature we have is if I undo the paste that I did there, and just press and drag so that that iPad variation artboard is outside of my viewport, when I paste again and take a look at what I've done, notice that it ignored any of the artboards that were outside of my active area. This allows me to make sure I don't accidentally paste objects on artboards I didn't intend. I need to keep them within view.
I think you'll find this new paste feature to be really handy in your everyday work. Be sure to give it a try.
Replace repetitive tasks with a single click. The paste to multiple artboards feature is a perfect example. Simply copy any object to the clipboard, select one or more target artboards, and paste the object into your design. Your content is placed in the same X and Y location on the target locations and it’s centered on smaller artboards.
