Now I am going to show you a quick transformation here. Now that I have drawn a few different rectangles here, notice that I have got these rectangles that are centered, so they are symmetrical, that is to say, around this guideline intersection. We are going to do that using the Reflect Tool. Inside Illustrator, you flip objects, you create mirror images of objects not using a command, like you do in just about every other program on the planet or an Option or something along those lines, but instead you use an actual tool. It's a little bit odd but it's such a low-level function that I want to show it to you right now.

Press the Shift key and click on each of these other rectangles here using the Black Arrow Tool. So you want to go ahead -- I will do that again, we will click off of it to deselect everything. I will click on one of the rectangles and then I will Shift+Click on the other two. So Shift+click on the two rectangles in order to select them. Now at this point, notice that I have sort of this bounding box set up here that goes around the farthest reaches of my rectangle. The bounding box is even considerate enough to be rotated for me, so that it exactly matches the edges of my rectangle.

Thing is, I really don't like this bounding box at all. It does let you do things like just drag a corner handle in order to stretch everybody. However, as we get more advanced using Illustrator, you will see that it's better to be able to drag an entire group of objects by one of these corner handles and snap them to a different location. That tends to be a more useful way to work.

So the easier ways to work inside Illustrator are not necessarily the best ways. So I am going to undo that transformation there. I am going to go up to the View Menu and I am going to choose Hide Bounding Box or you can press that keyboard shortcut, Command+Shift+B or Ctrl+Shift+B on the PC. That gets rid of the bounding box. It keeps your selection point, so you know this object is selected. However, it just gets rid of the bounding box, so that you don't accidentally scale the object by dragging a corner handle. Now notice, if I drag one of the corner points, which is what it is now, it's no longer a handle, it will snap into alignment with some other group of points which can be really useful. Right now I don't need this to happen but it can be extraordinarily useful to be able to work this way.

I think more useful than that darn bounding box, because the bounding box, in truth, just duplicates functions that are already readily available inside Illustrator, readily available Scale and Rotate options, as we will see in a future lesson when we talk about transformations. I am going to undo that change. Alright, but first let's look at flip in here. I am going to go over to the toolbox and notice right there, there is that Rotate Tool and it has a flyout menu. If you click and hold, you'll see it's a flyout menu that has both the Rotate Tool, which allows you to rotate shapes, and the Reflect Tool, which allows you to flip shapes. Reflect Tool does have a keyboard shortcut which is O and the way you can remember that is that an O is symmetrical. So more symmetrical letter there is, really it's symmetrical on both axes.

So I am going to go ahead and take this tool. Now you can drag with this tool. If you drag with the tool, you are basically setting the angle of the mirror which really doesn't do us a heck of a lot of good for this. So that's not what I am going to do, I am not going to reflect the shape by dragging and you rarely ever do that inside of Illustrator. Instead what I am going to do is I am going to press the Option key or the Alt key on the PC and I am going to click right here at the intersection of these two guidelines. So Option+Click or Alt+Click inside that nose there and you can either reflect shapes around a vertical axis or around a horizontal axis and get a feel for which is which, turn on the Preview checkbox right there.

So when you are flipping around a vertical axis, you are actually flipping horizontally and when you are flipping around a horizontal axis, you are actually flipping vertically. So they, sort of, do the opposite of what you might think. You can also flip around an angled axis, if you want to. So you can flip around a 45 degree axis, if you are so inclined, in order to perform that kind of modification there.

Alright, I will tell what, I am not so inclined. So I am going to go ahead and select Horizontal in order to do a vertical flip. I will click, instead of clicking the OK button here; I will click Copy in order to make a duplicate of those rectangles down in this region of the illustration. Now I am going to press and hold the Ctrl key or the Command key here on the Mac to temporarily access the Black Arrow Tool. So if you press the Command key here on the Mac, press and hold, or the Ctrl key on a PC, you temporarily access the last used Arrow Tool, which in my case is the Black Arrow Tool. I am also going to press the Shift key while I am pressing Command and I am going to click on each one of these rectangles. So I have six rectangles selected in all.

If you don't like that technique, you can just go up here, get the Black Arrow Tool and Shift+Click on those remaining rectangles but I want you to make sure you have all six rectangles selected. Then go back to the Reflect Tool. Press the Option key or the Alt key and click inside the nose once again. This time we will flip the shapes across the vertical axis, always helps to keep that Preview checkbox on, and then click Copy in order to copy all six rectangles across that vertical axis.