Multiple rotated and shifted copies

[piticfericit]

I'm currently working on a project where one of the deliverables consists of a "filmstrip" of the same UI element (a dial) rotated by some degrees and shifted down by a fixed number of pixels.

At first I thought it would be a simple task: 1) Duplicate 2) Rotate + Shift, and then just duplicate as many times as needed, where AD would "learn" the rotation and shifting amounts and do it again. The problem? For some reason on each copy it also moves a little to the left, almost as if I had moved it slightly to the left too, not only down. At first I thought it was because the object center isn't at the actual center, so I set the center where it should, but on further copies it didn't do the right thing. Then I tried making a "temp" square that would be centered, just in case there was a bug where the center position doesn't get copied, but same thing happened.

The only way I got to do this was to manually rotate and shift each copy and there are close to a hundred copies per dial, which is very tedious, specially if I need to make a change to one of them.

 

The question is: Is there any way to automate, script... or something else that makes such task simpler?

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Cheers!

[A_B_C]

Hi piticfericit,

 

I fear there is only one way to do this currently:

• Create your start dial, duplicate and rotate by the intended degree (A.)
• Power duplicate (B.)
• Align all duplicates right (C.)
• Move the last duplicate to the intended position, and space vertically (D.)
• Done (E.)

The uploader seems to have scrambled the order of my screen shots, but you will get the idea nevertheless.

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex

[piticfericit]

Hi Alex,

 

Thank you for the detailed response (including screen shots). Your solution might actually work, I'll give it a try!

 

Thanks a lot,

 

piticfericit