Create Polygons with Sides of a Specified Length

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 8, 2020
2 replies
10265 views

I'm interested in drawing pictures with tilings of regular polygons of various types. Is there some way to create a polygon in Illustrator and specify that the sides (not the radius) are a certain length? For example, to create a triangle, square, pentagon, and hexagon that each have sides exactly 10 pt long? It doesn't seem to be possible, but I just want to make sure that I'm not missing something. Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Steve Werner

In recent versions of Illustrator, when you use the Polygon tool and look at Shape Properties on the Control panel, it shows the Side Length and you can edit it.

CarlosCanto

Community Expert

Is there another way to do this?!

Hi RstrAt, you can always use good old math to scale your shape.

Scale % =targetSideLength/currentSideLength*100

so, lets say your shape's side measures 50 pt and you want to scale it to 70 pt per side

Scale % = 70/50*100 = 140%

Steve Werner

Correct answer

Community Expert

In recent versions of Illustrator, when you use the Polygon tool and look at Shape Properties on the Control panel, it shows the Side Length and you can edit it.

J

joseph.f.moralesAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Steve, that's great news. I'm on CS3 currently, so I need to upgrade to a more recent version. It would be great if anyone knows which version introduced this improvement to the polygon tool.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

It was a CC version.

CC is the only version you can now officially upgrade to anyway.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded