Scaling Strokes Proportionally in Illustrator

Hey guys! I thought I'd share a little useful tip I learned in Illustrator recently that you guys might want to use in your own projects or when assisting other students in the library. When you open illustrator and create a shape with a stroke around it, do you notice how the ratio of the stroke to shape changes when you try to resize the shape bigger or smaller on the page? I have found myself in this situation a number of times and it can be quite frustrating when you're designing on a smaller scale, and get everything perfect and exactly how you want to look, but then it all changes when you try to scale it bigger.

Up until now, I had come up with my own remedy: When I wanted to resize a shape with a stroke around it proportionally, I selected the shape, clicked "Object" in the top menu bar, clicked "Expand", and made sure that both "stroke" and "fill" were selected. This process transformed my stroke into another shape, allowing it to resize proportionally.

However, there is an easier method to achieve this! By clicking Illustrator > Preferences > General and selecting "Scale Strokes and Effects", Illustrator will automatically scale your strokes proportionally so that the ratio of stroke to shape stays the same no matter what size you make it on your page.

Scaling a shape with a stroke *without* "Scale Strokes and Effects" selected

Scaling a shape with a stroke *with* "Scale Strokes and Effects" selected