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Proportional ellipse??

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doodler22

Technical User
Oct 16, 2006
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I'm working on a logo. I need an oval and then another oval of a different color to be just outside of the 1st oval and then another oval outside of the other one. When I use the transform tool, I don't get the size quite right. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Suggestions?
 
Sorry...I have Illustrator CS3 on a PC.
 
What about using the appearance panel to add a stroke of the desired width and color, then add a second stroke and color. Does that give you the effect you want?
 
Hi


Draw you oval, add a stroke the width you want the second oval to be on the outside.

Drag guides to indicate where you want the center oval to fit. I use a little black box (visible in the image) as a gauge to make sure the width is the same as the stroke I added. Just drag it to each side and then drag a guide to the correct location.

Draw the last oval in the center

Mike
 
Ps

The reason that transform doesn't work is because the ellipse that you are resizing inside the original ellipse is proportional i.e. the long dimension changes more then the short dimension, so they don't end up concentric.

You can only do it that way with a circle which has equal dimensions in both hight that width.

Mike
 
Lyell--I must not be doing something correct in the appearance panel. When I use the flyout menu and add another stroke with a different size and color, I don't see anything.
 
Nocandu--how do you make sure that the 2nd oval is the same shape? I tried it and it didn't look correct - it wasn't the same size/shape.
 
Hi


You have to make sure that the width of the space between all the ovals are exactly the same both in hight and width.

If you look closely you will see that mine are not exactly I was in a hurry. But if you are careful you can get it right.

If it would make it easier you could just layout the grid I have shown and draw three ellipses instead of using a stroke on the outside. Draw the grids by starting in the corner and drag across to the opposite one.

Mike
 
If you are not seeing the stroke it's because you haven't assigned a color to it.

Look at the picture of the box and the outline at the bottom of the controls palette.
 
Draw the grids by starting in the corner and drag across to the opposite one."

That's supposed to say "Draw the Ellipses by starting in one corner and dragging to the other.
 
Hmm -- don't know why you would see nothing. You do need to add the largest stroke first --i.e., if you want the appearance of having each oval 20 pixels wider than the previous, first add a stroke of width 40 of whatever color. Click on the word "Stroke" and make sure you have "Align stroke to outside" selected. Now add another stroke of width 20 of a different color; again, make sure that the stroke is aligned to the outside. Does this clear up the problem, or is it something else?
 
...yeh, use the appearance palette for what you need as Lyell has suggested, you can layer effects in that palette, much easier than drawing separate objects in a lot of cases...

...you can also layer fills on top of one another and use the "effect > path > offset path" function and apply different positive values to different layered fills in the appearance palette. Doing it this way allows you to use gradients on the fills if you wanted (you can't put gradients on strokes as easy as you can using offset fills)...



andrew

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Hi

I did this one by just constructing the grid with drag in guides and then drew 3 ellipsis starting with the largest.


It only took a couple of minutes forget the outline thing.
This is very easy, just make sure that you get the grid even and to the dimensions that you want your logo to be.

Mike
 
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