A question for Ace

[scottie]

I got all excited about your tip in Layers to find the center of thing. Finding the center of a triangle has always been a problem for me soooooooo when I read your tip I immediately tried to find the center of a triangle, wellllllll it did find the vertical center but not the xy center. Also, when I rotated the triangle 45º's any tried your tip, the center it found was in the same place as before the triangle was rotated. Am I missing something?

Tip finds the center here-
It should be where the perpendicular to bases intersect.

[AdobeAce]

Hi Scottie,

You found the exception to the rule.

Or maybe not! With a triangle it seems to be finding the center of the bounding box. But if you rotate the triangle it's not even doing that. Unless you Reset the Bounding Box (Object > Transform > Reset Bounding Box).

With all the other objects that can be created with the Polygon tool, the center of the object and the center of the bounding box are one and the same. Hmm! Interesting. So I guess "Show Center" is really finding the center of the Bounding Box!

But if you want to find the "true" center of a triangle, this should do the trick – After you create your triangle, Select it. Copy it and and Paste in Front of the original (Command + F). Then, with this duplicate selected, go to Object > Path > Average... Select "Both" for Axis and click OK. Drag Guides to this true center and delete the Average points.

Ace

:D

[The Repro Kid]

Is this tip only in the magazine? I can't seem to find it in the web site.

[AdobeAce]

Hi Repro,

This was one of my "Tips of the Day" which are delivered by email. You can sign up for them on the Layers homepage. (It's hidden near the upper lefthand corner of the page.)

Ace

:D

[scottie]

Create a triangel with a diameter of .5. Now create a circle with a diameter of .5. Use align vertical after selecting both the circle and the triangle. This may seem cumbersom but you'll only have to do this once. Do apple-y to go into outline mode. Zoom in on the triangle base. Move the circle to be exactly tangent to the base of the triangle. Zoom out, go back to preview mode apple-y. Group the triangle and the circle. Select the circle and give it no fill and no stroke. Give the triangle a stroke of whatever, say 1 pt. Now drop the circle-triangle shape into the symbols library. Whenever you need a trangle with a precise center just grap the circle-triangle shape and drop it onto you drawing. With the shape still selected - choose Object-expand...okay and the circle-triangle center will reveil itself. You can scale the object up/down, rotate change it's fill or stroke. I realize it's painfull, but just at first. If you create the symbol in the AI start-up drawing it will always be available.
Ex:

[The Repro Kid]

Create a triangel with a diameter of .5. Now create a circle with a diameter of .5. Use align vertical after selecting both the circle and the triangle. This may seem cumbersom but you'll only have to do this once. Do apple-y to go into outline mode. Zoom in on the triangle base. Move the circle to be exactly tangent to the base of the triangle. Zoom out, go back to preview mode apple-y. Group the triangle and the circle. Select the circle and give it no fill and no stroke. Give the triangle a stroke of whatever, say 1 pt. Now drop the circle-triangle shape into the symbols library. Whenever you need a trangle with a precise center just grap the circle-triangle shape and drop it onto you drawing. With the shape still selected - choose Object-expand...okay and the circle-triangle center will reveil itself. You can scale the object up/down, rotate change it's fill or stroke. I realize it's painfull, but just at first. If you create the symbol in the AI start-up drawing it will always be available.
Ex:
That's a nice geometric solution.

About the bold typed part of the quote above, you could just use the align palette to set this part up with two clicks.

But I like what ace said about averaging points to get a center point. If one was really fussy one could use the averaged points to create a center, then use the pen tool to delete two of the tree averaged points and then group the remaining point to the triangle to be used as a center. You could turn off the triangle's own center point in the attributes palette so as not to be confused by two points. Then you would not have an extra circle but you would have a nice center point.

[scottie]

[QUOTE=The Repro Kid]That's a nice geometric solution.

"you could just use the align palette to set this part up with two clicks."

The "triangle" doesn't have a horizontal center. The center indicates as the center of the triangles bounding box. Two clicks won't work, that was the purpose of my post. The symbol menu is a very powerful tool not used by many.

After an Align double click

[The Repro Kid]

The "triangle" doesn't have a horizontal center. The center indicates as the center of the triangles bounding box. Two clicks won't work, that was the purpose of my post. The symbol menu is a very powerful tool not used by many.

After an Align double click

Aww, jeeze,

I'm not talking about your search for the center of a triangle, I'm talking about alignment gymnastics, try my method to do your initial aligning...
;)

[scottie]

Aww, jeeze,

I'm not talking about your search for the center of a triangle, I'm talking about alignment gymnastics, try my method to do your initial aligning...
;)

Your two click methode doesn't work as shown. Did you leave something out?

[The Repro Kid]

The meaning of those two buttons is 1: "align to center" and 2: "align to bottom."

I can't imagine how it wouldn't work for you.

[scottie]

The meaning of those two buttons is 1: "align to center" and 2: "align to bottom."

I can't imagine how it wouldn't work for you.

Great tip...thanks

So all that averaging was for nought