Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
The third way to create copies of shapes is to use the standard Windows convention of
pressing
CTRL
-
C
and then
CTRL
-
V
. Unlike Cloning and Duplicating, copies inserted from the
Clipboard land precisely in the center of the interface screen, not the drawing page.
Constraining Your Way to Making Pie Wedges
Pie wedges are useful in charts and also as Web elements. You
can easily use all the features covered up to this section for
manually creating multiple pie wedges; you change the math
a little to result in the number of pieces you want to create.
In the following steps, a six-piece pie is created. You need six
isosceles triangle shapes to carve six pie wedges from a circle;
the interior angle of an isosceles triangle is 60 degrees. Using
Angle Constraint of 60 degrees, you create a triangle with the
QuickShape Tool and point it at the center of a circle. Then use
the Drop Copy technique to build the other five triangles, each
perfectly aligned so you can intersect them with the underlying
circle.
The
Drop Copy
technique is the most important part of
the steps to follow; you'll often find yourself using it for fast,
complex scene creation. With an object selected, you hold
down the left mouse button and drag the object to a destination
on the page where you want a duplicate. Before releasing the
left mouse button, you tap the right mouse button so that both
buttons are depressed briefly. Then you release both buttons
and a duplicate is dropped under your cursor. Let's build a six-
wedge design now:
1.
Beginning with a new document, go to Options, and set
the Angle Constraint on the General tab to 60 degrees.
Choose the Ellipse Tool, and then hold
2.
CTRL
to constrain
the proportions of the new object to a perfect circle.
Drag and then release the mouse button when you
have a circle of about 3 inches in diameter (it might be
displayed on the Infobar as 288pix).
Fill the circle with a medium tone color—any color will do.
3.
4.
With the QuickShape Tool selected, set the number of
sides to 3 on the Infobar.
Hold
5.
CTRL
while you drag a triangle, constraining the
direction of the triangle while you're creating it. Move
the cursor up and down a little when you've arrived at
a size for the triangle of more than half the width of
