The FreeHand perspective grid lets you easily create vector or text objects that appear to be in three-dimensional space without having to manually fit the objects to a horizon line and vanishing points. You can either use the default grid or customize the grid to contain up to three vanishing points. You can move the horizon line and vertical grids to control the three-dimensional appearance of the objects you will snap to the grid. Then, you draw the objects and snap them to the grid, moving them along the grid to position them. The objects' perspective updates automatically as you move them on the perspective grid.

You can use the perspective grid to create foreshortened Web site navigation bars, site maps, and other objects and import the FreeHand file into Flash to animate them. Imagine your company logo zooming toward you, getting larger as it gets closer to you. In Flash, it takes a lot of time to create this perspective effect, but in FreeHand, it's quick and easy.

For details about the perspective grid, see FreeHand Help or the Using FreeHand manual.

In this example, the artwork was drawn entirely in FreeHand and snapped to the FreeHand perspective grid. The buildings have different perspectives. This technique requires the use of several custom perspective grids, which the artist defined in the Define Grids dialog box. (You display this dialog box by choosing View > Perspective Grid > Define Grids.)

(Artwork by Delores Highsmith)

In this example, the artwork was drawn entirely in FreeHand, snapped to the FreeHand perspective grid, and then exported to a Flash movie SWF format for animation in Flash.

(Artwork by Delores Highsmith)