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Try :
- Draw path to divide.
- Draw a black line to use as a division (a small horizontal line).
- Copy black line and stroke to other color to contrast with black.
- Align the two so that two ends meet without changing length. (use vertical line as a helper to align)
- Use these two segments as a pattern brush.
- Apply pattern to path to divide.
- Tune with pattern brush scale to vary divisions' length and, therefore, the number of divisions (This is where the contrasting colors of the segments allow you to see the
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It all depends on whether the path is straight or not and what you call "equal" sections. Equal along a vertical, horizontal or angled axis, or equal along the path.
Object>Path>Add Anchor Points will only halve straight paths. If you're working with curves it will give you unequal results depending on the length of vector handles.
If you want to divide a curve into equal sections it becomes a bit complicated. Dashed strokes with carefully adjusted increments might get you part of the way. But as soon as you expand a dashed stroke its thickness comes into play.
Using Pathfinder on this kind of thing will certainly divide your path into horizontally equal sections, but the steeper the slope of the curve the longer the sections along the line. Please try to define your problem better.
The same principle applies to curved paths, so long as you are talking about adding equidistant points per segment. The added points are equidistant (for practical purposes) along the segment, as you can verify by copying individual segments, pasting them, and then checking the length of each in the Document Info Palette.
You can also verify it by applying the Filter to two ellipses that have the same major diameter but different minor diameters. Note that corresponding points do not align vertically between the two ellipses.
This is useful in equidistant segmenting of segments (but not for equal divisions of whole paths with multiple and unequal segments).
Add Points, on the other hand, does abide by the curvature. So, the corresponding points do align vertically. This is important for example, when you need to find radial angles of an ellipse as when you need an elliptical protractor to use in construction of an illustration. It's also useful for plotting positions for frame-by-frame "orbit" animations, because the orbiting object then "speeds up" as it approaches the minor diameter, and "slows down" as it approaches the major diameter, which is more convincing of a uniform orbital motion.
Unfortunately, Illustrator's rather lame Add Anchor Points command doesn’t provide an option for how many points to add per segment. It only adds points to bisect segments. You have to apply it repeatedly. That rules out odd-numbers of new segments. (Another example of how an Illustrator feature falls far short of completion, compared to other programs.)
So how do you, for example, find the 12 hour posiitions of a circle? You need 2 added points per original segment. Add Anchor Points can’t, but Zig-Zag Filter can. Note that the hour points of a circle, of course, demark each 15 degrees. Certainly a useful increment.
But what about our elliptical protractor? Certainly, for example, an isometric protractor with tick marks every, say, 10 degrees would be a very useful thing. That would require 8 added points per segment. Add Anchor Points can’t do that. Zig-Zag Filter can, but the points would be equidistant--not suitable for use as an elliptical protractor. What to do?
Use Zig-Zag Filter on a circle...
...then scale the circle vertically by 58% (sine of the isometric angle, 35’16”).
Such machinations can be the keys to building isometric elliptical and spherical protractors (and dimetric and trimetric protractors, for that matter)--essential tools for correct construction of simple and compound rotations about the drawing axes.
(Now try to tell me that the various features (and unintuitive workarounds) involved above couldn't and shouldn't be integrated into a single, more discoverable tool.)
JET
When discussing "technique" with Illustrator, there's at least 101 different ways to draw whatever. In this particular case, Harron's described method of dividing a straight line into equal segments is also my method of choice. The only thing I'd like to add is, that to retain the original position of the line, regardless if it's horizontal, vertical, or angulated, is the Reference Point that you select. Eddie
Horizontal Line Draw line. Notice that the Reference Point is at 9 o'clock position.
Horizontal Line With line selected, divide by number of segments that you want. In this case, seven.
Horizontal Line Click "Enter".
Horizontal Line Final result after stringing together multiples.
Angled Line Notice that the Reference Point is at 11 o'clock position.
Angled Line Either the W or H may be divided, it does not make a difference.
Angled Line Final result after stringing together multiples.
Try :
- Draw path to divide.
- Draw a black line to use as a division (a small horizontal line).
- Copy black line and stroke to other color to contrast with black.
- Align the two so that two ends meet without changing length. (use vertical line as a helper to align)
- Use these two segments as a pattern brush.
- Apply pattern to path to divide.
- Tune with pattern brush scale to vary divisions' length and, therefore, the number of divisions (This is where the contrasting colors of the segments allow you to see the variation of pattern scale).
- Expand appearance.
- Delete initial path.
- Join smooth resulting segment's overlapping ends to rebuild continuous path.
I hope it works.
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