drawing open arcs of any angle

[lugaburuga]

i am fairly new to freehand and although i have i tried i cannot find easy methods to draw very simple objects such as semicircles, open arcs of any angle etc.

can anyone help?

thanks in advance

 

[rickwells]

To draw a semi circle first select the Elipse tool and drag whilst holding down the shift key. This will give you a circle which you can cut at the halway points, at the left and right, using the knife tool. Delete one half then highlight the remaining half and click Close in the objects palette to complete a semii circle. There are other ways too.

 

[lugaburuga]

thanks for your reply rickwells.

I have used corel draw and simple things like drawing an open or closed semicircle seem so much easier than using freehand. You can specify the exact angle for a start.

When you are cutting the circle in freehand how do you ensure that you finish with a perfect semicircle for example?

 

[rickwells]

Actually, I don't use Freehand much and as previously mentioned there is more than one way to do what you want. To cut the circle exactly in half, first click on it and 'UNGROUP'. This will now give you 4 nodes which can be used as guides to cut exactly through a centre line either vertically or horizontally. Another way is to draw a rectangle over the circle so that one edge runs through the circle centre and the rest of the rectangle extends beyond the edge of the circle. Highlight both objects and use the 'PUNCH' tool from the 'Extas Operations' palette/menu. This will cut the circle in half and leave a closed semi-circle. The object youn want to cut must be below the one doing the cutting.