Distances

To automatically reformat the vertical positioning of staves, systems, and instrument groups to avoid collision of notes, articulations, smart shapes and other items, use the Vertical Collision Remover plug-in.

Here are some techniques you can use to easily adjust distances and measurements of staves, systems and other score elements.

To change the distance between staff systems

See Systems.

To change the distance between staves

1. If you’re not in Scroll View, choose Scroll View from the View Menu.
2. Click the Staff Tool  .
3. Drag any staff up or down to move the staff vertically. You can drag more than one staff at a time if you choose several at once (by shift-clicking or by drag-enclosing their handles, so that they’re highlighted). If you have many staves, you can move all except one or two as follows: Choose Select All from the Edit Menu to highlight all staves’ handles. Then shift-click the staves you don’t want to move; when any staff is selected, a shift-click “deselects” it. Then, as before, drag any selected staff to move all selected staves at once.

To make all staves equidistant

After you’ve experimented with dragging staves up and down, you may want to restore them to even spacing. See Staves—To space existing staves evenly.

To change the distance between staff lines

1. Click the Staff Tool  , and double-click the staff handle you want to modify. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears. Choose Other from the Staff popup menu.
2. Select Custom from the Staff Setup dialog box.
3. In the Settings section, for Line Spacing, enter the space between each staff line. Finale will round the number you enter to an even number of EVPUs (or equivalent).

To change the distance between notes

The distance between the notes in each measure is determined by your choice of Allotment Library (see Document Options-Music Spacing). You can also drag individual notes horizontally in one staff (see Note positioning), and you can change the horizontal position of notes in all staves that fall on a certain beat (see Beat positions).

To change clef, key, and meter distances

You can set various global distances in the Document Options dialog box. From the Document Menu, choose Document Options, then choose Clefs, Keys or Time from the list on the left. You will see the options on the right. Now, set the value for Space Before _ , or Space After _ to change the distance between the clef, key or time signature and the barline. The units are whatever you’ve selected using the Measurement Units command. Any measurement up or to the right are positive numbers; measurements down or to the left are negative.

For a more complete discussion of these options, see Document Options-Clefs,Key Signatures, orTime Signatures.

To change the page and system margins

See Margins; Systems.