Create Polygons with Sides of a Specified Length

[joseph.f.morales]

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!

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

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.

[joseph.f.morales]

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]

It was a CC version.

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

[joseph.f.morales]

Thanks Monika. Looks like I'll have to ponder whether this feature is worth $22 a month to me.

[RstrAt]

Is there another way to do this? The shape option is not showing up on the control bar in the current version.

[Ton Frederiks]

The shape options  should be in the Transform panel.

If they are missing in the Control panel, that probably means there is not enough room for all items that are checked in the Control panel menu.

[RstrAt]

 This is all it's giving me. I try to adjust thedifferent numbers but it only changes the overall height and width, I want to change individual sides.

[Ton Frederiks]

You seem also to have an older version that does not support this.

[CarlosCanto]

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%