I’m having trouble aligning a pattern, and I think I’m missing some basic concept. I want to align a pattern to start at a particular point, but AI always seems to align it to the top left corner of the (page/artboard). I remember having this trouble in CS3, but I thought the problem had been addressed in CS5.
My pattern is 1 sqin., and I want to create a strip starting 1/2 in from the top and 1/2 in from the left hand edge of a page. According to the CS5 manual: “To adjust where all patterns in your artwork begin tiling, you can change the file’s ruler origin.” So I change the origin to (0.5in x, 0.5in y). But when I apply my pattern, it still aligns to the (0.0) origin.
For example, if this is the original pattern:

when I apply it to an area using (0.5, 0.5) as the origin, it gets applied like this:

I’ve looked through my preferences and the only thing I found that might affect this was the “Transform Pattern Tiles” parameter, but changing this didn’t have any effect.
What am I doing wrong? I can work around the problem in a couple of ways, but I don't want to go through extra steps if I don't have to.