How to draw a spiral

[Ken_Gr]

Here's one for Serif 'old timers'!

If you were with Serif in pre Affinity days, you may still have your copy of DrawPlus 6. It has an excellent spiral tool - the number of arms and the number of turns per arm are freely adjustable.

So dig out your old copy, design your spiral, and export it as an SVG. Then open in Affintiy. You won't be able to adjust the structure any further, but you can alter everything else (size, line, fill, effects etc).

It's worked fine for me.

[EthanDM]

On 5/2/2015 at 5:58 AM, ronnyb said:

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...

 

 

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write clear and detailed instructions for how to create a spiral. This was a huge help and much appreciated. Thank you!