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Gareth_Williams
Gareth_Williams
Inspiring
September 21, 2023
Answered

Positioning Points At Specific Degrees Around A Circle?

  • September 21, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 1820 views

Hi everybody, does anybody know the best way to position points at a specified degrees on a circle or curve in Illustrator? For example if you want to place shapes around a circle evenly spaced at 30º around the edge? In this scenario there would be 12. I’ve done this by eye except for the ones at 0º, 90º, 180º, 270º which you can obviously do just with the XY coordinates.

 

The yellow ones are just done by eye! The centre snaps to the edge of the circle so I would just need guides for the degrees. I can’t think of anything better than just placing in an image of a protractor!

Thanks for any help,
Gareth

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Kurt Gold

As far as I understand your request, the common Rotate tool can just do that. For example, you may place one of the smaller circles at 12 o'clock, activate the Rotate tool, set the rotation reference point to the centre of the big circle, Alt click the reference point, set the desired angle in the Rotate dialog, click the Copy button and then hit Cmd/Ctrl-D as often as desired.

 

2 replies

Jacob Bugge
Community Expert
Jacob BuggeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 21, 2023

Gareth,

 

Kurt had decided to spare you the scare that there is no such thing as a perfect circle, but if you really wish to have the shapes spaced at exactly 30º and at the same time be exactly snapped to the actual (non perfect Bezier) circle, you will have to do it in one of a few customized ways, one of them relying on a script that seems to be gone with the other scripts by 佐藤浩之 (Satō Hiroyuki).

 

The simplest way may be to use the Polar Grid as follows:

 

1) Set the size to the desired circle size with no concentric dividers and and the same number of radial dividers as the desired number of objects,

2) Select the radial divider group and scale it up (at least) a wee bit (105% or more is suitable for easy snapping),

3) Snap copies of your shape to the intersections corresponding to your snapping by eye.

 

To experience the scare, you can use the rotation way on a simple circle and zoom in as far as you dare on a shape at any other angle than 360º/0º, 45º, 90º, 135º, 180º, 225º, 270º, 315º.

 

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 21, 2023

Do you mean the Ovalize script, Jacob?

This script is for turning every selected path into an oval which fits the width and the height of the path.
If the width and the height are equal, it turns into a circle.

You can specify the number of the anchor points before the script modifies the paths.

Still available here:

https://github.com/shspage/illustrator-scripts/tree/master/etc

Jacob Bugge
Community Expert
Jacob BuggeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 21, 2023

I was thinking of the Divide script, Ton, but Ovalize is more versatile, and still available as you say, so a much better and simpler choice than the Polar Grid.

 

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Kurt GoldCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
September 21, 2023

As far as I understand your request, the common Rotate tool can just do that. For example, you may place one of the smaller circles at 12 o'clock, activate the Rotate tool, set the rotation reference point to the centre of the big circle, Alt click the reference point, set the desired angle in the Rotate dialog, click the Copy button and then hit Cmd/Ctrl-D as often as desired.

 

Gareth_Williams
Gareth_WilliamsAuthor
Inspiring
September 21, 2023

Thanks Kurt. That absoloutely does work!

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