Creating a spiral or coil

[Radim108]

On 2/10/2019 at 8:45 AM, firstdefence said:

er oops? in my defence I was half asleep but awake enough to press buttons, coherency had obviously left the building.

I wonder where I'd seen the spiral shape?

One can find it for example in Corel Draw.

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

i found a new method to create a "nearly" perfect linear spiral:

1. Create new image with square size, e.g. 2160x2160
2. Create vector shape rectangle, no fill, no stroke from 0,0, size 2160,16 (used as guide only)
3. Create with pen tool a line from 0,0 to 2160,16
4. set stroke to 2 pixel wide pure black
5. Group both layers
6. duplicate layer
7. set y position to 16 with help of transfer panel
8. duplicate as many times you want (define the number of spiral rounds)
9. merge visible
10. filter->distort->rectangular to polar
11. may put a white circle shape into the background

Enjoy.

 

large_spiral_2pixel_line_16_pixel_distance.afphoto

[loukash]

I vaguely remember creating linear spirals with a few clicks in Freehand 5 (or was it already 7?) back in 1996.

Oh well…

[firstdefence]

Just tried this and it works, but older systems will struggle with the rectangular to polar conversion.

Inkscape can do spirals easily and they remain vector, always choose the path of least resistance.

 

[Greyfox]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

Inkscape can do spirals easily and they remain vector, always choose the path of least resistance.

 

For those that still have it installed Serif's DrawplusX8 had a spiral tool.

 

[firstdefence]

Another freebie tool is VectorStyler and included in it's box of tricks is... yep you guessed it - Sprials.

You can Copy/Paste these into Affinity apps and they retain the curve status.

Think of VectorStyler as the Affinity plugin Affinity shouldn't need. It is in beta so expect bugs.

[Lorox]

On 2/11/2019 at 12:59 PM, firstdefence said:

Or open Inkscape and make one in less than 10 sec

Well said (and I actually did accordingly...)

Unfortunately, Inkscape 1.1.2 tends to be so "lethargic“ on my 2019 Mojave iMac that it isn't exactly fun. BUT: you get it done and the options Inkscape’s offering for customizing spirals are very useful indeed.

If Inkcape's performance on Mac would be as fluent as it seems to be on PC I'd actually do quite a few things Designer doesn't offer (yet) in that app...

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, Lorox said:

Unfortunately, Inkscape 1.1.2 tends to be so "lethargic“ on my 2019 Mojave iMac that it isn't exactly fun.

I had high hopes for the 1.1.2 version but Its performance is terrible on my 3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i7 iMac running Catalina as well, reminiscent of how apps behaved on old underpowered Macs running System 7. It also has a lot of UI quirks like popup menus not staying open unless the mouse button is held down & some options that (I think) were just ported directly from the Windows version & either do not work at all or work in some obscure way I have yet to figure out.

[firstdefence]

I use the 1.2.0 beta, might be worth a try: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.2/?latest=1

 

[isgcl]

On 2/10/2019 at 11:28 AM, firstdefence said:

The Spiral Tool, well, how to make a spiral and the tool who made the gif lol!

I try this and did it 😊
Thanks for solution

[firstdefence]

11 minutes ago, isgcl said:

I try this and did it 😊
Thanks for solution

You're welcome @isgcl

[isgcl]

@firstdefence Here is the result

[firstdefence]

That's cool, nice use of the technique. 👍

[NotMyFault]

just thinking if we could use vector mesh warp to create a spiral from

[firstdefence]

3 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

just thinking if we could use vector mesh warp to create a spiral from

I'd considered that as well but it doesn't seem to work with pen drawn lines and even if the stroke is expanded it doesn't twist the line, but I like the lateral thinking.

[firstdefence]

26 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I'd considered that as well but it doesn't seem to work with pen drawn lines and even if the stroke is expanded it doesn't twist the line, but I like the lateral thinking.

Inkscape 1.21 is still my goto app for spiralising, it opens in 2 seconds and boom a delicious spiral is copy/pasted into Affinity.