Microsoft Surface Dial support in Illustrator
Learn how to work with the Microsoft Surface Dial in Illustrator.

Illustrator now supports Microsoft Surface Dial on Windows 10 Anniversary edition and later or directly on Surface Studio. You can use Surface Dial to adjust settings and parameters for your Illustrator documents.

MS-Dial

While using Illustrator, long press Surface Dial to access the following options:

Undo/ Redo

Perform Undo and Redo operations.

undo-redo
Perform undo and redo operations by rotating Surface Dial

Arrange

Move the selected object by one object to the front or one object to the back of a stack.

arrange_edited
Arrange the selected object by rotating Surface Dial

Zoom

Zoom in or out while you’re working on artwork.

zoom_2
Zoom your artwork by rotating Surface Dial

Artboard navigation

Navigate from one artboard to another in your document.

artboard
Navigate artboards by rotating Surface Dial

Tools

You can choose one of the following tools in Illustrator: Rotate, Scale, Brush, Blob Brush, and Eraser.

tools_rotate
Rotate your artwork using Surface Dial
  • Select the Rotate tool, plot a pivot point on the selected object, and then rotate Surface Dial to transform the selected artwork about the pivot point at an interval of five degrees.
  • Select the Scale tool, and then rotate Surface Dial to uniformly scale the selected artwork at an interval of 5 percent.
  • Select the Brush tool or the Blob Brush tool, and then rotate Surface Dial to adjust the brush size.
  • Select the Eraser tool, and then rotate Surface Dial to adjust the diameter of the eraser.