Step and Repeat function?

[sfoster]

Hi All,

Does anyone know a quick way of repeating and tranforming an object in illustrator. I am trying to create an illustration like this:

http://www.cloudnineinteractive.co.uk/steprepeat.jpg'
http://www.cloudnineinteractive.co.uk/steprepeat.jpg

So far I have had to copy and paste each beem and rotate it through 10, 20, 30 degrees and manualy line it up.

You can see what I am trying to achive, its like a sun with beams radiating out from the centre. I want the beams to radiate out from the centre circle through 360. Is their a quick and easy way to acheive this ie. a step and repeat or step and transform function?

Any help appreciated

[warking@mac.com]

Go to:
www.illustratortechniques.com

Look in the tutorial section and you will find a video tutorial of this exact thing. I made the video tutorial and it shows what your looking for.

If your not a member, become one. It's worth every dime.

Thanks
Todd

[GuyB]

I did'nt looked at warking's site, but here's how I do it :

1- create the circle;

2- create the first "ray";

3- select that ray and click on the Rotate tool;

4- option-click with the Rotate tool in the center of your circle (you might have to go to the Outline mode to see the center point of the circle)

5- in the dialog box, enter an angle and click "copy";

6- hit Command-D to repeat the number of rays you want.

[The Repro Kid]

There's a few ways. Here's a variation of GuyB's method. Select your object to rotate, then use the rotate tool to rotate the object, not the move dialog, meaning click in the center to choose the origin, but don't option click to which brings up the move dialog. Then hold down the Option key while rotating with the rotate tool and your object will be duplicated and rotated, and leave the original in place. Holding down Option while making any move or transformation always copies the object you are moving/transforming. After the first move has been made, then use Command-D to repeat the move, it will repeat everything you did, including the copy. The advantage to GuyB's method is it allows you to do some math to calculate an even number of degrees to step your rays. I'm giving you the quickie freehand-eyeball method. If you're really tricky you can actually rotate all around the circle one time, repeatedly holding down and then releasing the option key to drop copies of the ray every time you release the option key. That's fun and looks very impressive when someone's watching over your shoulder ;)

If don't need to rotate and actually just need to step and repeat, you can select the object and then hit the Enter Key, this will bring up the Move Dialog, enter some values to move the object, hit Copy, not OK. Your object will be copied and moved one time, then you can continue to hit Command-D to repeat the copy and move as many times as needed.

Command-D is the key equivalent to "Duplicate Edit" or "Duplicate Move," I think it used to be in the edit menu. Now it's been moved and renamed a bit, you can find it under Object-Transform... "Transform Again."

[sfoster]

Thanks very much fr the help guys! I've cracked it.

Simon