How to divide a circle intio three equal segments

Jet,

Fantastic. (That would be Rotate Tool in step 8?)

> There must be more ways.

Personally, I'd use the Polar Grid tool. Clickdrag, but don't mouseup. Press and hold the down arrow key until you have only one circle. Tap the left arrow key until you have only three radii. Press and hold shift to constrain the circular proportion, then mouseup.

But then I would be annoyed that the three pie slices have four points each. So...how do you make three 120 degree pie slices with only three tidy points each?

1. Polygon Tool: Mousedown at some pre-existing snap location. It could be the intersection of two guides, an anchorpoint of a path, etc. Drag, but don't mouse up. Tap the down arrow keys until the polygon has only three sides (an equilateral triangle).

2. WhitePointer: Select two of the triangle's anchorPoints. Click the Convert To Smooth button. Select the other anchorPoint. Click the Convert To Smoot button. (Why two operations? Because in Illustrator's lame Control Panel, the Convert / Cut Selected Points buttons disappear if all the points of a path are selected--more evidence that Illustrator doesn't know the difference between a path being selected as an object and merely having all its points selected.)

3. Select>Path>DirectionHandles.

4. ScaleTool: AltClick the snap-to location that was used in step 1. In the resulting dialog, enter 128.4%.

5. Ctrl-X (Cut to clipboard). Delete. Paste In Front.

6. White Pointer: ShiftClick one of the three pasted paths to deselect it. Delete (the other two are deleted.)

7. Pen Tool: Click one of the endpoints. Click the snap-to location. Click the other endpoint.

8. White Pointer: AltClick the path to select all of it. Scale Tool: AltClick the snap-to location. In the resulting dialog, enter 120 degrees, click Copy. Ctrl-D (Transform Again).

JET

It will in 10, Silk.

I was in a hurry with the screenshot, last night before closing down; I would have moved the Layers Palette into the frame to show that there were an unselected path beneath the selected one, but the Charcter Palette slipped in.

Nice Harron and Steve, and you are welcome Daniel.

But as I said: this is the is the Divide a Circle into Thirdendeals Thread. There must be more ways.

I May have done something wrong, but it looks like divide will not work unless you ungroup more than once.

Much better!

Daniel:

Another simpler method-

Select the Polar Grid Tool (mouse down on the line tool and pick the right most button.

Click the artboard and enter equal W and H, 0 Concentric Dividers, 3 radial dividers, OK, and then either--

A- Use the Live Paint Tool to fill the segments

B- Use Pathfinder Palette Divide to break the circle up into separate pieces.

steve

I cannot believe it. I followed Jacob's instructions over and over until I finally achieved it (had to figure out a couple of things that were not that clear to me at the beginning).

Thanks a lot to both of you!!!

BTW... What does Ctrl*F do exactly?

Daniel

I switched to points to get the GIF nice (85.04 pt corresponds to 30 mm).

Harron and Jacob,

I'm afraid you're both asuming I have a good command of Illustrator. But that's not the case (I come from the PhotoShop realm, and am not very used to working with vectors). And I just need to make a circle divided into three identical segments, each of them with a different color, such as you would see in a pie chart with 33,33% for each of the three segments.

I would very much appreciate a little more detailed step by step explanation from any of you.

Thanks a lot!

Daniel