Comments on: Making A Perfect Triangle

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:53:01 +0000

The world is a large, flat rectangle. My desktop is a large, flat rectangle. My LDC is a (semi) large, flat rectangle… I see no reason to ever draw a triangle. I pronounce you a digital devil-worshiper!

By: Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:44:56 +0000

Oh dear i am wrong, damn. It does create an equilateral triangle it is just that the bounding box of the triangle is not the same in width and height, however the triangle is.

By: Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:05:43 +0000

Actually i have just realised that when you use the polygon tool and hold shift whilst dragging, it doesn’t make an equilateral triangle as the width and height are different however there is an easy fix. Simply copy and paste one of the dimensions from one field into the other via the top tool bar. There you have it.

By: Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:55:56 +0000

Wouldn’t the Polygon tool be the quickest and easiest method to do this? If you click and hold shift whilst dragging? Rather than double clicking the polygon tool to set the number of sides but press the down key whilst dragging to set 3 sides, i find this quicker. One little annoyance though why does the down key only set sides whilst you click drag and not when you stop dragging? I have never understood this.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:42:32 +0000

And I thought I’d never use technical drawing in the real world!!! Let alone how to draw shadows from light sources that are falling on objects, but let’s start with the problem at hand -

Equilateral Triangles:

Draw a circle, any size.

Duplicate the circle.

Place the center point of the circle anywhere on the edge of the circle. You have to make sure the new circle passes through the center of the original circle circle. Which it should do anyway.

Using the Pen Tool, where the circles meet at the top (or bottom) create a new point, then click on the center points of the circles to create the triangle. Click the top point again to close the path.

Delete the original circles.

A perfect equilateral triangle.

By: Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:31:31 +0000

David,

So pleased you pointed this join command out, it saves a lot of pain especially when aligning diagonal lines, oh and great work on the keyboard shortcuts plug-in so much better than the original that came with Indesign, ctrl+j, join command yeah!

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:40:19 +0000

@Jerome: We discuss InDesign’s hidden Join command in podcast 82.

By: joecab

joecab — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:09:26 +0000

I just draw a line, then clone it twice with a 60-degree rotation each time. Rearrange the lines so that their ends touch and you’re done.

By: jerome

jerome — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:58:05 +0000

David,

I’ve done tech art for a number of Math books and Editor’s have kept me honest on that on more than one occasion. I usually make a line segment in Illustrator, copy/rotate it 120°, line up two endpoints and join them then close the triangle. I don’t think that I have come across a join command in InDesign, but using that ratio and your convert to triangle seems to work fine in ID.

I could probably write a script easy enough to create them in either program, as well as PhotoShop but haven’t had the need lately.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:38:55 +0000

@Jerome: Wow, you are so right! I’ve deleted that from the post.