Dividing an object into equal parts

[Sultanviking]

Hi guys,

 

First of all. Thanks for an awesome programme - which I have started to get more and more familiar with.

 

I am currently working on making different geometric designs, and was wondering how you would, say divide a circle into equal parts, in a more easy way than making each separate line by yourself?

 

This would save me a lot of work, and I really hope there is a intuitive way of doing this.

 

Just for the record, I´m a newbie into graphics and was formerly frightened by the complexity of previous programs and have taken the leap with affinity - be gentle in your advices :)

 

 

Thanks in advance!

[Ben]

You can use Composites to subtract one shape from another or find the intersection of two shapes. That would be one way to create parts of a circle.

 

Another option is to look at our Shapes. We have a Pie tool that can be used to create circle segments.

[MEB]

Use the Pie shape to create a pie with 30 degrees (or other value you want). Convert it to a shape (Layer -> Convert to Curves). Power duplicate it (press cmd+j) and rotate the copy 30 degrees (or the same value you used previously) using the Transform panel - make sure the vertice of the Pie and the point of rotation match in the Transform panel - ideally one of the corners of the square. Press cmd+j (Power Duplicate) again several times to complete the rest of the circle.

[MEB]

I've created a video to reply to another thread that shows this in detail. Just don't straight the edge of the pie chart as i did in the video. You can enter any value you want. I used 20º in this case. 

[Afivi]

Hi, I need to do the same thing (divide a circle in equal parts). However, I need 366 segments (one for each day of the year) but the program changes my angle automatically to 1º, so I can obtain only 360 segments. Is there another way to divide a circle in 366 equal segments?

Thanks in advance for your advise!

Eva

[gdenby]

Eva.  Here's what I came up w. I decided to see if it was possible to type 366 lower case "o", font Arial, using the artistic text tool to conform to a circle. I arbitrarily chose a 2 point size for the font. I set up an A4 size document using points as the measurement unit.

 

I did some math figuring out the radius of a circle that would hold 366 2 point letters. I had some trouble getting the letter positioned on the outside of the 129.5 point radius circle. Then I typed 61 "o" and copied and pasted another 5 times. It worked just about perfect. the beginning and end  appeared a fraction of a point off. The results were miniscule, somewhat small for even an A4 document. 

 

But the method worked. Depending on how the print was made, larger point sizes would work. I suppose any mono-space font would work, perhaps some sort of dingbat set.

 

If you don't mind, why do you need this?

[Alfred]

Hi, I need to do the same thing (divide a circle in equal parts). However, I need 366 segments (one for each day of the year) but the program changes my angle automatically to 1º, so I can obtain only 360 segments. Is there another way to divide a circle in 366 equal segments?

 

Don't worry about the fact that the controls on the Context toolbar display everything rounded to whole numbers! I created a pie slice with a start angle of 0° and an end angle of 360/366°, duplicated it and set the rotation of the copy to 360/366°. When I 'power duplicated' the rotated copy to create 364 more rotated copies, I ended up with a complete circle (and got a lovely moiré pattern into the bargain).

[gdenby]

Don't worry abut the fact that the controls on the Context toolbar display everything rounded to whole numbers! I created a pie slice with a start angle of 0° and an end angle of 360/366°, duplicated it and set the rotation of the copy to 360/366°. When I 'power duplicated' the rotated copy to create 364 more rotated copies, I ended up with a complete circle (and got a lovely moiré pattern into the bargain).

 

Groovy, dude.

[R C-R]

Don't worry abut the fact that the controls on the Context toolbar display everything rounded to whole numbers! I created a pie slice with a start angle of 0° and an end angle of 360/366°, duplicated it and set the rotation of the copy to 360/366°. When I 'power duplicated' the rotated copy to create 364 more rotated copies, I ended up with a complete circle (and got a lovely moiré pattern into the bargain).

Very clever! However, being an old man with a feeble brain, when I tried to duplicate this technique, I kept losing count of my power duplicates long before I got to 364 of them, so I came up with a (slightly) easier variation:

 

I did what you did, but I stopped at 59 power dups (so 61 total pie slices). Then I selected all of them (verifying with the Move tool's count of selected items in the context menu that I had 61 slices) & combined them into one group layer. Duplicating that group, rotating the dup 60*, & power duplicating 4 more times resulted in 6 groups of 61 slices, equally spaced at 60° intervals. I could have ungrouped each of the 6 groups but leaving them grouped made it more manageable for me, & made it easy to color each group differently to show the groups, like this:

(The JPEG doesn't show the lovely moiré pattern very well, but it is there.)

[JimmyJack]

You could also use the Cog tool and Divide. Two button magic  :) .

 

1) Cog (Teeth=366, Inner Radius=0%, Hole=0%, Tooth Size 100%, Notch=0%, Curvature=0%)

2) Divide

 

 

cog divide.afdesign

[Alfred]

I kept losing count of my power duplicates long before I got to 364 of them, so I came up with a (slightly) easier variation:

 

I did what you did, but I stopped at 59 power dups (so 61 total pie slices).

 

I think I would lose count long before I reached 59! The beauty of doing it the way I did is that you can do it visually instead of having to count anything, but there's the obvious drawback that you don't get those nice coloured sections.

 

(The JPEG doesn't show the lovely moiré pattern very well, but it is there.)

 

It shows up fine for me. :)

[Alfred]

You could also use the Cog tool and Divide. Two button magic  :) .

 

1) Cog (Teeth=366, Inner Radius=0%, Hole=0%, Tooth Size 100%, Notch=0%, Curvature=0%)

2) Divide

 

Ingenious, but in my AD on Windows beta version the 'Teeth' control on the Context toolbar seems to have a maximum value of 48. Is there some trick that would allow me to override that limit?

[JimmyJack]

Ingenious, but in my AD on Windows beta version the 'Teeth' control on the Context toolbar seems to have a maximum value of 48. Is there some trick that would allow me to override that limit?

 

Type it in  ;) .

[Alfred]

Type it in  ;) .

 

Nope. I tried that: it doesn't want to play. :(

[JimmyJack]

Nope. I tried that: it doesn't want to play. :(

 

Hunh :o ..... Well that stinks  :wacko: . 

(and I'm sure you've also tried a function of maths.... like 12 teeth *30.5. Interesting because in your Pie procedure above, an input field accepted 360/366. I guess because the quotient is still in-between 0 and 360....)

[R C-R]

You could also use the Cog tool and Divide. Two button magic  :) .

 

1) Cog (Teeth=366, Inner Radius=0%, Hole=0%, Tooth Size 100%, Notch=0%, Curvature=0%)

2) Divide

Brilliant! Too bad it doesn't yet work on the Windows beta, but I'm sure that will be fixed before the retail version comes out.

[Alfred]

Brilliant! Too bad it doesn't yet work on the Windows beta, but I'm sure that will be fixed before the retail version comes out.

 

I've now reported the issue here.

[Axander]

Sorry for the amateur level of this question, but where are the dimension controls for the Cog Tool? I've enabled my Context Toolbar and it has none of the controls I see in the video: no Teeth Number, Inner Radius, Hole Radius, etc. Just stroke size and three other icons, a target, an eye, and two arrows circling each other. I've looked elsewhere for these controls and had no luck. 

I am trying to divide a donut shape (two concentric circles) into twelve, to form a zodiac, with straight lines dividing the sections. Is Cog the easiest way to do this?

 

Thank you.

[gdenby]

Hello again, Axander,

If a built in parametric shape is converted to curves, you will see only the "three other icons, a target, an eye, and two arrows circling each other". Those are for manipulating all curve objects and groups. Look at your layers panel. If the shape is listed as "curve(s)" it has been converted by some operation. It should say ellipse or cog, etc if it is still a parametric object.

You should see something like this if the cog is still a "cog":

 

 

[Axander]

Thank you! Perfect.