How to copy layer as a circle ?

[X901]

Hi , 

I want to copy one shape different times to make it as circle 

to make it more clear ,  I want to make something like this

​I made it in manually way , but I'm wondering if there is a fast way to do it ?

 

 

[John Rostron]

I had to do something similar to create a dial. The way I would approach your problem is first to duplicate your shape, the rotate it 180 degrees, and move it to a position that would be diametrically opposite on the circle. You then group or combine the two. All you do then is to duplicate, then rotate the top copy through 10 degrees (or whatever) and repeat as necessary.

 

John

[gdenby]

Here's an approach.

 

The image took maybe 12 minutes.

 

Create a framework. Use the polygon shape tool, select the number of facets you need, such as 20 in your sample. No fill, default stroke. With snapping on, draw out from the page center. Draw another w. a larger or smaller radius as you like. 

 

Next, define the section for the first shape. Using the pen tool in straight line mode, draw a line from the top most point of on poly to the other. Draw another separate line from the 1st angle to the left of on poly to the 1st angle of the other. The 2 poly perimeters and the lines define a trapezoid drawing space.

 

Using the pen tool in polygon mode, rough out the shape you want, and refine it by tweaking node positions, and changing some to smooth to get the curves you need. Hint: At this step, select the inner poly and make the curve parameter 100%. That way, there will be a smooth curve to help refine the hand drawn shape.

 

At this point there is 1 "tooth" or "cog". While selected, move the center of rotation to the page center. Use the duplicate command and rotate the hand drawn form the appropriate amount. 18 degrees for the 20 toothed form in your example. Then repeat the duplication till you have a complete ring.

 

 

I was inclined at 1st to use the circle tool, and make it into a donut_pie section that would then be modified to get a shape. That doesn't work if the number of desired sections requires and arc that is not a whole degree. Ex.: 16 "teeth" require an arc of 22.5 degrees, and the pie tool will only do whole degrees.

 

Then I tried using the cog tool, and modifying the individual cogs. It gave precise spacing, but requires dozens of node additions and manipulations.

 

So, I ended up doing a hand draw, replicating and adding the dupes together. Much faster.

 

Note. I'm slowing down quite a bit w. age. My elder son moves about 2 - 3 times faster than I, so you might get this done in a bit over 3 minutes.

[R C-R]

Yet another way to do this in Affinity Designer is using Symbols. It is a bit tricky & complicated to set up but the benefit is it remains editable. There may be simpler ways to do it but this is what I did:

 

1. With snapping on, draw a circle centered on the middle of the canvas. This will eventually form the inside curve, so size it accordingly.

2. Draw a straight vertical line with the Pen tool from the center to beyond the top edge of the circle.

3. Divide 360 by the number of 'teeth' desired. Use a calculator app if this is not an integer.

4. Duplicate the line in step 2. In the Transform panel, set the anchor point to the bottom middle one & in the Rotate ® field copy in the number from step 3.

5. Select both lines with the Node tool & from the Context toolbar select Join Curves, then Close Curve. This should produce a triangle shape with a bottom point centered in the circle. 

6. Move the circle to above the triangle in the Layers panel, select both, & use the Boolean subtract to get a 4 node shape that will form the basis for the Symbol.

7. For convenience, fill this shape with a color & set its stroke to none. (optional)

8. Do not alter the bottom curved segment's nodes but at this point you may begin adding some of the 'tooth' shape. For now it doesn't have to be precise or match the final shape.

9. Make this a Symbol by selecting it & pressing Create in the Symbols panel.

10. Select the Symbol with the Move tool, make its Rotation Center visible from the Context toolbar, & move it to the center of the canvas. It should snap there.

11. Duplicate the symbol in place (like with CMD+J).

12. On the canvas grab the rotation handle of the duplicate, hold down the Shift key & rotate it 180*. (Using Shift should make it snap to exactly 180* when you get near that point.)

13. Select both instances of the Symbol in the Layers panel & duplicate in place. (You should now have four symbol instances.)

14. With the two still selected from step 3, in the Transform panel, set the anchor point to the center one, in the Rotate ® field copy in the number from step 3, & press Return, Tab, or whatever to rotate this pair by precisely this angle.

15. Power duplicate this pair repeatedly until the total number of Symbols is either the same number of 'teeth' as desired for the final shape if that is an even number or twice that number if the number of teeth is an odd number.

16. If it was an odd number, select every other instance of the symbol (they should be stacked next to each other in the Layers panel, making this less tedious to do) & delete them.

17. You now should have the same number of Symbols on your canvas as the number of 'teeth' for your final shape, precisely aligned edge-to-edge to form a circular shape with inner edges that form a perfect circle. Yay!  :)

18. At this point it is a good idea to stop & save the document, maybe also duplicating it for future use.

19. Now the fun part: using the Node tool, select any one instance of the Symbol, add or move nodes as desired to create the final 'tooth' shape. Because it is a Symbol, all the other instances will assume the same shape automatically.

 

A few notes: This should be adaptable to any number of 'teeth." Because the Rotate ® field in the Transform panel accepts any rational number even if it does not display all the decimal places, the precision of the Symbol placements is limited only by what you enter there. In the attached 21 tooth example, I used a value of 17.142857 copied from the Mac's built in calculator, & that seems close enough for most work but it isn't really precise enough for 100% accuracy, which you can see if you zoom in to extreme levels.

21 tooth example.afdesign