Adobe Illustrator – Step and repeat around an ellipse?

stedders

New Member
I have an ellipse (blue shape in screen shot) 120mm tall / 135mm wide;

and then I have ELEVEN tabs (magenta in screen shot) that will be attached to this; these tabs need to step and repeat evenly around the ellipse.

Any smart suggestions on how I could achieve this effect?Screen Shot 2013-01-22 at 11.57.56.jpg
 
Draw one of the magenta shapes and position where required, with that selected click the Rotate tool from the toolbar, hold down Alt/Option key and a cross hair thingy will appear, move this to the centre of the circle and click, a dialogue box will pop up, in the angle type 360/11 (or however many you want) then press on Copy, then Control / Command D until you have them all
 
Thanks spottypenguin. I appreciate your feedback.
Unfortunately that approach doesn't work for an ellipse. It would be fine if this was a round circle, but not an ellipse.
Thanks though.
 
I have an ellipse (blue shape in screen shot) 120mm tall / 135mm wide;

and then I have ELEVEN tabs (magenta in screen shot) that will be attached to this; these tabs need to step and repeat evenly around the ellipse.

Any smart suggestions on how I could achieve this effect?View attachment 1918



You could work with the negative space around your shapes:

1/ Create your blue ellipse shape
2/ Put a stroke around the OUTSIDE of the shape (as the colour you want your tabs)
3/ Use the star tool and create a star shape with 11 points (more or less depending on how many tabs you want) to fit around your ellipe, with each point just inside your circle.
4/ Use your star shape as a mask.
5/ Copy and paste another blue ellipse shape in FRONT of the mask, only this time without a stroke.

Mission complete. :icon_smile:
 
Thanks CLHB. That's going to take some thinking through (on my behalf) but I think I can see what you are driving at.

Really good solution.
Thanks.
 
Thanks CLHB. That's going to take some thinking through (on my behalf) but I think I can see what you are driving at.

Really good solution.
Thanks.

Or you could:

1/ Create your blue ellipse shape
2/ Use the star tool and create a star shape with 11 points (as the colour you want your tabs), create your star shape as lines, so your Radius 2 will be set to 0.
3/ Up the stroke on you star shape, which will create your tabs.
4/ Place your blue ellipse shape in front.

Done.

Either way shouldn't take too long, only a couple mins work really.
 
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