How would you do...

[ernie-f]

Yes, I drew it like that too.
First I drew a segment, then doubled it and filled in the gradients.
Finally the shadows. That's it.
Here is my Xara-File to help understand what i did.

Aaron Draplin Design.xar

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes Ernie great.

Here's an alternative with a ruffle3 bevel applied:

[Jonopen]

Egg, you're just rubbing salt into the wound!

Thanks for the video and explanations and Ernie for download file. I was getting so frustrated trying to draw it geometrically. Math is not my strong point but I was even on the verge of buying a pair of compasses!

[Marco D]

We appear to have tackled it very much the same way Ernie.

As folks seem to want to know how I went about it:

VIDEO

Thanks Egg, for the video explanation on how you did it. You are always very knowledgeable and inspiring.

[Marco D]

This is my solution to the problem, unlike Egg I built the curved piece of the design in a completely different way and repeated it around the reference center by rotating it by an angle equal to 360/7 (set in snap mode to be as precise as possible).

draplin_star_talkgraphic.xar

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Marco. Great construction. On my second attempt I did in fact use a 51.43 degree rotation & it worked perfectly which must be down to creating a more accurate first shape for the multiple rotations. I needed no 'patches' in this drawing.

Originally I thought I'd need to create the three seperate 'bevel' effects but was quite pleased to see using a proper bevel worked fine and therefore only required one linear fill adjustment not three per shape.