Creating circles that are equidistant?

[SamiSeif]

Hi all,

I'm a total beginning so please forgive me if this is a basic question, but I want to create circles within circles and make sure that there is a 7mm distance between one circle and the next (please see attached file). I'm doing this because I want to create a circular musical score (staff). How can I make sure that the circles are progressively bigger so as to have the desired distance?

Thanks,

Circular Score.afdesign

[v_kyr]

That's easy to do.

1. Create a new document and set it's units to mm.
2. Create one circle and copy/paste it on place, so you have two circles one above another.
3. Now select one of them in the layers panel, go into the transformation panel and choose the middle orientation point.
4. Next type in +7 into the width and height panel (check middle point orientation selection) so you applied +7 mm to the width/height of the on circle.
5. Continue to do that repetitive that same procedure with other newly circle copies.

 

 

[laurent32]

if you hit +7 then the distance between the two circles is 3.5…

i think you should hit +14…

[firstdefence]

Another way is to use the grid set to 7mm and snapping set to 'snap to grid.'

1. Copy: Press CMD (⌘) + C on Mac, Ctrl + C On Windows)
2. Paste: Press CMD (⌘) + V on Mac, Ctrl + V On Windows) 
3. Hold: Shift (⇧) + CMD (⌘) on Mac, Shift + Ctrl on Windows) to keep the circles aspect. and resize to the next grid point/line.  

 

 

[iconoclast]

If you want to have many circles with the same distance in a row, you can also use Power Duplicate: select the first circle, press Control + J on Windows or (I think) Command + J on MAC, enter the distance you want into the Transformation Panel and then simply press Control/Cmd + J again and again.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, laurent32 said:

if you hit +7 then the distance between the two circles is 3.5…

i think you should hit +14…

Yes, due to the bloody bounding box method (x, y, width, height) here for defining a circle out of an ellipse. - Usually one would expect instead to define real circles more the school math geometric way, so via giving "x, y, radius", aka a center origin position and a radius.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
# Draw some circles with a 7mm distance, assuming here 96 PPI
#
# Usage in shell:  python3 circles.py
#

from tkinter import *
root = Tk()
root.geometry('400x400')
root.title("Equidistant Circles")
myCanvas = Canvas(root)
myCanvas.config(width=400, height=400)
myCanvas.pack()

number_of_circles = 5
radius = 20
seven_mm_in_px = 26.5   ### -> 7 mm = 26.5 px at 96 ppi

def create_circle(x, y, r, canvas):
    '''Params: center coordinates, radius '''
    x0 = x - r
    y0 = y - r
    x1 = x + r
    y1 = y + r
    return canvas.create_oval(x0, y0, x1, y1)

for i in range(number_of_circles):
  create_circle(200, 200, radius, myCanvas)
  radius += seven_mm_in_px

root.mainloop()

 

[iconoclast]

4 hours ago, lacerto said:

I believe you won't get the same distance, but instead a scale factor that will increase the distance in relation to the size of the last duplicate, so for each instance the distance gets bigger.

Ah okay, I misunderstood the task. I thought he wanted to create circles in a row. In that case my workflow would work. But you are right that it will not work with circles inside circles or any task with changes in the size of the shape. Sorry! It would be a nice additional feature, if you could even do this. I had that case several times, that I would have been glad to have this opportunity. Possibly I already made a feature request for it some time ago, I'm not sure. Otherwise I think, I, or someone else, should catch up on it.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.