TechNote (Archived)

Where is the center point crosshair indicator of the object in the Flash editor?

Issue

The center point, or transformation point, is not visible for certain selections.

Reason

All groups, drawing objects, instances (movie clip symbols, button symbols, and graphic symbols), type blocks, and bitmaps have a transformation point that Flash uses for transformations (such as scaling and rotation) made within the authoring environement. This point appears as a small circle in your selection, filled white when using the Free Transform tool and, if visible, just an outline when using the arrow tool.

The illustration below shows a graphic symbol instance that has been selected with the Free Transform and Arrow tools. The transformation point is the circle in the center of the selection (default location).

For groups, drawing objects, type blocks, and bitmaps the transformation point is not visible by default when these obejcts are selected with the Arrow tool. This point, however, still exists and serves the same purpose; it may just not visible since all transformation points for these objects are implied with the default center location.

Note: Transformations made with ActionScript use the registration point of symbol instances. This is represented by a crosshair in a symbol selection.

Solution

You can force the transformation point to be visible for any selected object if not visible already:

Select the object.
Select the Free Transform tool.
Drag the transformation point and release it in the desired location (this can be same location in which it started) .

After you sett the transformation point location for an object using the Free Transform tool, the transformation point will be visible when that object is selected with the Arrow tool.