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Easiest way I know, but I don't think it yields a TRUE spiral, more of a "stepped" spiral, as the segments are not expanding continuously, but rather in ¼ circle increments. Until the wizards at Affinity give us THE POWER of a true Spiral Shape, we are left with this "crude" approximation, but it works decently...

 

1. Using the Circle Shape tool, make 4 times as many concentric circles as you need "turns" in your spiral. Set the Fill to none and Stroke as you wish for all circles.

 

2. Convert all the circle Shapes to Curves using the Context Toolbar running across the top of the UI

 

3. Split the innermost circle's path into two paths by selecting the Node tool, selecting one point, clicking on the Break Curve button on the context toolbar, selecting the adjacent node and reapplying the Break Curve command on it. You should now have 2 paths comprising ¼ and ¾ of the circle.

 

4. Delete the ¾ circle path

 

5. Repeat this procedure for each circle radiating from the center, remembering to Break the Curves at the "next" quarter-circle path segment in the direction you want the spiral turning, either clockwise or counterclockwise, relative to the previous path segment you split.

 

6. Turn on Snapping to include Objects bounding boxes.

 

7. Using the move tool, drag the innermost quarter circle, and snap it to the next quarter circle where the spirals would naturally meet. You may need to hover over the second quarter circle to enable it as a Snapping Candidate (the path will have a thin purple outline to let you know its a snapping candidate. When the paths are aligned horizontaly and vertically, you should see red and green guides temporarily appear as you drag the first path next to the bounding edges of the second path.

 

8. Using the Node Tool, select the overlapping nodes of both paths and press the Join Curves button on the Context Toolbar.

 

9. Continue this process for the remaining quarter circles.

 

Alternatively, you can make one circle and split it into ¼ and ¾ as descrbed above, then using the Move tool, Rotate it by 90°, drag a corner and scale it proportionally as desired, and simply press Cmd + J as many times as you want to duplicate the original path AND the 2 transformations you applied. This will yield overlapping quarter circles which you can then join as described in step 8 above...

 

 

Hello,

 

can anyone recommend a way to draw a spiral?

 

Thanks

 

Tommaso

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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@ronnyb thank you very much for the guide really exhaustive. Great work! 
Thank you too A_B_C

we hope that soon we can give the spiral shape from Affinity team. 

There is a request in the topics for spiral shape?

Affinity Designer 1.2

iMac OSX 10.10.3

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Ah okay, you have to create the first copy by using Cmd+J for example, rotate and resize it and then just hit Cmd+J again and again … simple as that … please find the Power Duplicate tutorial here:

 

 

Another idea … why not combine Ronny’s method and Power Duplicate … see below …  ;)

PowerDuplicate.mov

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cool technique, Alex!

 

And here’s another (jagged) one … using the power of Power Duplicate (Cmd+J) …  ;)

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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Ah okay, you have to create the first copy by using Cmd+J for example, rotate and resize it and then just hit Cmd+J again and again … simple as that … please find the Power Duplicate tutorial here:

 

 

Another idea … why not combine Ronny’s method and Power Duplicate … see below …  ;)

Thanks for the answer.

I had forgotten about the Cmd+J

 

And... what a clever idea about combining Ronny’s method and Power Duplicate.

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Where can I find this video with the stars in a size that I can see? When I open it here, it's very tiny - same size as the display above. I would like to view it almost full screen.  A link would be most helpful.

Windows 10 Home
Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104
Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104

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Easiest way I know, but I don't think it yields a TRUE spiral, more of a "stepped" spiral, as the segments are not expanding continuously, but rather in ¼ circle increments.

This topic, & in particular this comment & several of the posts by A_B_C, got me thinking: what exactly is a spiral, & how could I make a "true" one? This very quickly led me to the Wikipedia Spiral article, where I was reminded of something I was previously only dimly aware of; that being there are a lot of different kinds of 2 dimensional spirals.

 

If I am not mistaken, all the techniques mentioned here produce Fibonacci spirals. Wikipedia tells me they are approximations of the Golden spiral, which is one of the many continuously expanding true spirals.

 

At this point I realized something: a true spiral (one with a continuous "growth factor") would require infinitely many Bézier nodes; otherwise it would be a stepped approximation, right? If that is indeed true, there is no way Affinity could provide a true Spiral shape tool (& it makes me wonder how other apps with that tool handle this).

 

Anyway, I started thinking about ways to create "truer" spirals in Affinity & I have an idea about that I want to hear what you think of.

 

The basic idea is to create a two node line, set its center of rotation to one end, duplicate it, slightly rotate & lengthen the dup, then power duplicate that a bunch of times. The nodes opposite the center of rotation look to me like nodes on an Archimedean spiral, so by snapping a new line drawn with the Pen tool to each of those nodes in turn, this produces something resembling a stepwise approximation of that kind of spiral.

 

To make what I am talking about a little clearer, I have attached an afdesign file (in 1.5 format), with the history included so you can step backwards to see what I did. I only extended the new line through about one turn of the spiral -- it is a tedious process, but I hope this gives you an idea of the procedure.

Archimedean Spiral?.afdesign

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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On 8/3/2017 at 8:25 PM, LindaN said:

Use a type character. The font, Crop Circles", available at DaFont, includes a spiral

LindaN, thanks. I went looking and there are two similarly-named fonts. The one with the spiral is this one

Crop Circle Dingbats

and the lowercase m is the spiral. There are many other interesting shapes included. Worth browsing.

♥  WIN 10 AD & AP  ♥  Lenovo Legion Y520 15.6" Laptop

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  • 3 months later...
35 minutes ago, Akapraf said:

Check this spiral assets if you have trouble on creating one by yourself

http://graphicheck.com/Affinity-Designer-Spiral-Assets

 

The description states that the *.afdesign file can only be edited with Affinity Designer, but AD files can also be edited in Affinity Photo.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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