How to Create a Dashed Line | Adobe Illustrator

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This is How You Create a Dash Line in Adobe Illustrator.

So, the first thing we're going to do is go to our Tools Panel. We're going to click our Pen Tool. We're going to click 1 point, and another point, and let's say we just curve this last point for fun, just for brownie points.

Now, this is a solid line, of course, and sometimes people want to actually make dashes in their lines. Whether its, let's say you're underlining something and you want that to be dashed or whatever the case may be. The simple way to do it is to use, is to go to Your Stroke Panel.

So we're going to go to our Stroke Panel. And right now, it's not showing all of our options. So we're going to right click over here on our Options Panel. We're going to go to Show Options.

You'll notice that as it expands, you have a ton of other options.

Now, one of the options is Dash Line. It's really simple. Really easy to remember. You looking to dash a line, you click Dash Line.

So once you click it, you'll notice that your line has dashes in it.

And you can play around with the actual settings that are underneath. You have Dash, Gap, Dash, Gap. And what this does is, is it allows you to specify how big you want your dashes to be.

So, if we only have 1 thing selected, this will apply to every dash that's on here.

So we can use our Up and Down Arrow keys, and you'll notice the smaller we get, the smaller the dashes get; the larger we get, the larger the dashes get; and the gap will stay uniform to the dash size.

Now let's say we wanted to change that gap so that despite the dashes being where we've just made them size-wise, we can have let's say an 8-point gap.

It will change the size of gap so that it's not the same size as the dash, and you'll notice that in between the actual gaps and dashes.

So, our third section allows us to then change our dash size again so we can have a variation. It's not all uniform.

So let's say we go up in our value. And you'll notice that the look starts to change where every other dash is a different size and they start to change with respect to one another.

And then you can once again click in the next field and you can change the gap. You can make it smaller. You can make it larger. You can go to the next dash field. You can change the size of that. And you'll notice that you'll get different variations.

So if you want a dash line, head on over to your Stroke Panel. Click on your Dash Line Option. You can change the orientation from front to back, back to front. And you can change the dash size and the gap in between them, and you can have multiple variations of such.

And that's how you create dash lines in Adobe Illustrator.