how to fill page with hexagons?

I just tried to fill a page with black-filled hexagons so that they are all aligned perfectly vertically and horizontally. I duplicated and positioned as best I could by hand. Then, I used Alignment>equispace on horiz row selections then vert selections. No matter what I do, it will never be perfect with hand placement, obviously.

Is there a way to fill a page with the hexagons so that it looks like the attachment (ie everything perfectly squared in respect to the page)? I would need perfectly uniform spaces between the shapes so that it comes out perfectly squared with the page. This would be the first step I need to do in making a seamlessly tiled alpha for ZBrush.

There is a free utlility called Spray which is available on the Xara Xone shareware page You will need to resize and align the resulting hexagons(as a group) on your page (if you are using Designer pro 7 this is a "snap") Spray will generate perfect hexagons if you set the deformation down to 0 and you can adjust the spacing between them.

I would create a small bitmap of a small section of the pattern. The bitmap can then tile to fill the page as a background. If your web page does not have a separate color or pattern for the pasteboard area then the pattern will fill the screen. If there is a separate color or pattern for the pasteboard then the tiling pattern will stop at the edges of the page.

The pink pattern represents the bitmap tile which you can drag and drop onto the page or pasteboard and it will repeat endlessly.

I changed the colors to gray and white and added it as a page background.

I would do this:

* Draw a single hexagon (hold down Ctrl so that it's upright)
* Make sure magnetic snapping is turned on and "scale line widths" is turned off
* In the Selector tool use the right mouse button to drag a copy of the hexagon alongside it and click the left button to make a copy when the two hexagon's corners snap together
* Keep on doing that (you can just keep on dropping copies in the same drag) until you have a row that crosses the page
* Select the row
* Now use the right mouse button to drag copies of that row and snap them into place above and below the first row

That gives a perfectly aligned vector hexagon mesh.

Phil

When dragging the copies for the first row you can also drop one copy then select both and drop two copies then select all four and drop four copies, etc.

When dragging the copies of the row you may need to hit "g" during the drag for the points to snap properly. Use the 2, 4, 8 etc hint from above for these rows too.

Also, if you do then want them to have gaps between then you can select all, go back to the quickshape tool, make sure the dropdown says "Size & rotation" and change the size to be a little smaller. This will resize each hexagon about their individual centers.

This attached file took (just) under 2 minutes to create...

Gerry

OK, I'm trying these steps, but where is Magnetic Snapping on/off? I looked in Utilities but didn't see it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PhilM

I would do this:

* Draw a single hexagon (hold down Ctrl so that it's upright)
* Make sure magnetic snapping is turned on and "scale line widths" is turned off
* In the Selector tool use the right mouse button to drag a copy of the hexagon alongside it and click the left button to make a copy when the two hexagon's corners snap together
* Keep on doing that (you can just keep on dropping copies in the same drag) until you have a row that crosses the page
* Select the row
* Now use the right mouse button to drag copies of that row and snap them into place above and below the first row

That gives a perfectly aligned vector hexagon mesh.

Phil

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repost of previous, with quote...

where is Magnetic Snapping and Scale Line Widths? I looked in Utilities> Options, but didn't see it.

Sorry, the official name for "magnetic snapping" is "Snap to Objects" and it's the button on the toolbar with the red magnet icon (it's also available on the Window menu).

"Scale line widths" is on the Selector tool's infobar and it's button icon has a white line with a blue arrow pointing to it.

Phil

Thanks much for all the replies.