How would you draw this icon, Accurately?
The emphasis is on accuracy.
You can see that the corners are rounded and there is roundness to the teeth.
I'd love to see what method you use?
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How would you draw this icon, Accurately?
The emphasis is on accuracy.
You can see that the corners are rounded and there is roundness to the teeth.
I'd love to see what method you use?
Closest I could get Rik. I did have some issues with Ctrl+1 (Add Shapes) creating more nodes than required, needing node deletions.
Looks pretty decent, egg.
But, show us the method you used?
How did you go about doing it?
Quickly.
Draw a circle over a copy of your bitmap to get it as centred as possible. Clone that circle several times and resize to match outer size, inner cog size and central hole. Clone one more time & create a Centring Circle. Create centring lines by using align to centre with Centring circle.
Raw by eye a line gives the angle of the gears. Clone it and using the vertical centre line as the origin of the line, flip it horizontally. just to ensure true centre group the two angled lines and using the centring circle Align Horizontally. Ungroup & join these two lines into a shape.
To be continue.
Stellar quick shape intersect with circle, add circle, subtract circle. Sizing the quick shape should have been more accurate but didn't have the patience.
Quickshape of 8-pointed star aligned over the design.
Line, 15pt, Smooth Curve tracing out one cog.
Rotate and drop off cloned cogs at 45 degrees around centre of gear.
Simple centred circle, 15pt, no Fill.
Grouped and coloured as needed.
Attachment 124812
Attachment 124813
Acorn
Gear-Tool in Affinity Designer. Export as SVG.
Attachment 124814
That's the way I would have done it ...Quote:
Originally Posted by siran
We'll done Ernie. Although I suspect outside the intent of the challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by ernie-f
Some very good ideas there, guys.
egg: To be continued...!
Acorn: I didn't want to do any tracing. To me, that wouldn't be accurate. If I understood what you mean?
siran: That method looks very accurate.
ernie: I am not surprised in the slightest that AD has it built in.
Me?: Well, my idea is very similar to siran's. Except that I didn't think of using the shape tool to draw the 8 point star. I drew a rectangle and did things from there.
See the attached file.
Well now, Gary.
That is very different.
I like it!
Rik, by tracing, I used the original to determine the arcs and using the Ctrl key and other vertical and horizontal adjustments of the line nodes, I have a completely symmetrical cog. There is therefore no guesswork.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rik
Egg's "Raw [sic] by eye" is similarly "not accurate". siran's equally has some judgement required. Gary's is fitting points in a way close to mine; two of the lines have to be best guesses. Yours has its nudge points. Only ernie-f's nails it for accuracy to the original.
siran's is the best for the tip, yours for the profile.
In the end, a hard call but an enjoyable challenge.
Acorn
I used the Scale to Fit option (new with 16.2) so it scales down nicely on my iPhone.
I had to draw the icon for work and wondered if there was a better/easier way of drawing it?
As usual, there are different ways.
And it seems that Affinity have the challenge totally nailed!
Acorns use of the 8-pointed star suggests another way to do this while maintaining the rounded outer shape. This is not accurate to Rik's shape because I did this from memory.
Designing real gears was a pain I sadly recall in my engineering drawing classes.
Acorn
Here's the lines:Quote:
As stated earlier:
Raw by eye a line gives the angle of the gears. Clone it and using the vertical centre line as the origin of the line, flip it horizontally. just to ensure true centre group the two angled lines and using the centring circle Align Horizontally. Ungroup & join these two lines into a shape.
To be continue.
These lines made into a shape:
Select that shape & the Centring Circle. Clone. Rotate 45 degrees. Repeat a further six times:
Select the eight shapes and Ctrl+1 (Add Shapes):
Select the outer circle (NOT the centring circle) Bring to front (Ctrl+F) then shift select the newly created shape. Ctrl+3 (Intersect Shapes):
Select the next outer circle (NOT the centring circle) Bring to front (Ctrl+F) then shift select the newly created shape. Ctrl+1 (Add Shapes):
Finally select the next inner circle. Bring to front (Ctrl+F) then shift select the newly created shape. Ctrl+2 (Subtract Shapes):
However as I said earlier all these Combine / Arrange shapes can lead to unwanted nodes, one above another, so it's a matter of selecting the Shape Tool and Tab or Shift Tab deleting nodes (just the straight line ones, not any curved ones). Unfortunately even the Smoothing tool doesn't remove these duplicated nodes:
egg: That's similar to my method. Except that I used one shape that goes from top to bottom.
Then cloned it and rotated it 45 degrees.
Yes very similar Rick and probably easier to rotate than my method of using a Centring Circle. Still find the additional nodes created by Combine Shapes / Etc annoying.
Personally I would use ProCAD+ on RISC OS for something like that. (Screenshot from the Windows version but, has some problems with newer versions of Windows.) Works nicely with Artworks.
Attachment 124847
Very easy and just need to draw circle and single tooth for the gear. Set reference point for the tooth to middle of the circle and use multiple copy, quantity 8 and object centre, click OK and the result will be perfect.
Which is what Gary and i did in the Xara Desktop applications. The cog still needs to be shaped somehow.Quote:
Originally Posted by theinonen
Acorn
Only need to draw single tooth and half of the gap to both sides, and the cog shape comes automatically. No need shaping and very easy to do with reference image or with some helper lines.
Attachment 124851
Without reference image.
I think the way to remove guesswork is to focus on the tip (top) and the pitch (side) of a cog.
The tip curve is easily constructed from a circle with the same diameter as the gear, 485px.
The pitch, for the above size of the example jpeg, can be two intersecting large circles, 3200px diameter, whose circumferences align with the cog pitch.
Intersecting all shapes of the small circle and the two larger ones results in a stator of the exact required shape that can be cloned, rotated and to form the cogs.
The rest of the construction is relatively simple using two sized circles.
Attachment 124855 Attachment 124856 Attachment 124857 Attachment 124858 Attachment 124859
Acorn
A tip-top tip, Acorn!