Filling with colour

[singlestrandedbinding]

 Sorry I am very new to this

 

 

I created this image by drawing overlapping circles and then drawing individual rectangles (yellow)

How would I change the colour of the segments between the yellow bars - I tried to use the fill tool but it does not seem to work.

 

Thanks

[R C-R]

The Flood Fill tool only works on pixel layers. Your two circles are most likely vector shapes. If so, select both of them & use the boolean Combine geometry operation to convert them to a single Curves (note the plural) object. You can then set its fill color from the Color panel or Context toolbar as you would for any other vector object.

[gdenby]

R C-R's approach will work for getting a solid color. If you want a different color for each segment, there will be a good bit more work if you want to keep the drawing as vectors.

 

I messed around a bit, and the best way I could come up with requires drawing a circle, and converting that to a "donut." Then, using the pie controls, an arc of desired size can be made. Copy that, and rotate the pasted segment, adjusting the arc as needed. Repeat.  The yellow rectangles can be made the same way, but simply rotated w/o changing the arc size. 

 

Alternatively, if you don't need the precision and size variability of arcs, rasterize the drawing. At that point, the flood fill will work.

[Alfred]

Your two circles are most likely vector shapes. If so, select both of them & use the boolean Combine geometry operation to convert them to a single Curves (note the plural) object.

 

Alternatively, select the outer circle, press the 'Convert to Donut' button on the Context toolbar, adjust the inner ring of the donut to match the inner circle and then delete the original inner circle.

 

I tried intersecting a donut with a multi-toothed shape drawn using the Cog Tool, but I found that I got a large chunk on the left that wasn't divided up as expected.

Sliced-donut.afdesign

[R C-R]

R C-R's approach will work for getting a solid color. If you want a different color for each segment, there will be a good bit more work if you want to keep the drawing as vectors.

Another alternative for that is to apply a conical fill to the combined Curves object (or to a donut replacement). I tried starting by applying the default "Rainbow" style to the object & then using the Fill tool to add, delete, or modify the stops & midpoints that style creates. It is a bit tedious to set up but makes it easy to do things like non-destructively rotate or reverse the direction of the fill colors, & once it is set up can be saved as a Style for future use.

 

@Alfred: when I downloaded & opened your file, not only does it not divide properly, but also for no reason I can see both the donut & cog layers are partially transparent.

[Alfred]

@Alfred: when I downloaded & opened your file, not only does it not divide properly, but also for no reason I can see both the donut & cog layers are partially transparent.

 

@R C-R: Thanks for confirming the problem with dividing/intersecting. As for the transparency, that was just to let me see the image underneath so that I could line things up properly!

[R C-R]

I confess I had a 'senior moment' when I said I could not see why the layers were partially transparent -- somehow I overlooked the opacity setting in the layers panel. Doh!

[Alfred]

Interesting. I completely misinterpreted your question! :o

[JimmyJack]

Alfred, I think it's asking for trouble to have pure 100% and 0% set for tooth and notch size.

That will give you edges on top of edges... which will confuse our already skittish boolean brain.

You can type in 99.99% and .01% and it'll work. The input fields will still show 100 and 0, but the result will be clean(er).

[Alfred]

Alfred, I think it's asking for trouble to have pure 100% and 0% set for tooth and notch size.

That will give you edges on top of edges... which will confuse our already timid boolean brain.

You can type in 99.99% and .01% and it'll work. The input fields will still show 100 and 0, but the result will be clean(er).

 

Thanks, JimmyJack. I didn't actually set those values numerically: I simply moved the orange adjustment nodes without paying attention to the numbers on the Context toolbar. Your solution works nicely. :)

[singlestrandedbinding]

Thanks for your help everyone