Simple cogwheel shape in Illustrator CS
2004 at 06.38 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Recently I needed to draw a cogwheel for a project and I wonder if the steps I used to draw this is actually the fasted way to accomplish this. Maybe there are better, easier and faster ways. Of course taking in account that you need to draw this yourself and that you don’t go looking into some graphics library, since I’m pretty sure you’ll find it in most libraries. Actually this is something you should drag and drop into you “Symbols palette” for future use once you’ve drawn it ;-)
So my post of today is more like a question to my readers who have Adobe Illustrator experience.
Here are the steps I followed:
- draw a circle
- copy the circle
- choose the path type tool
- type the letter "l" around the circle using the font Zapf Dingbats, make sure it closes nicely
- convert the text to outlines (Mac: command + o - Win: control + o)
- paste the circle on top and fill it black
- select the entire illustration
- hit the "Exclude overlapping areas" button in the (Shape Modes) "Pathfinder palette"
- hit the "Expand" button in the "Pathfinder palette"
- select and delete the parts of the shape you don't need anymore
Just a bit of background information. I've never followed any Illustrator course (only a fast one for Quark (v3) and Photoshop (v2) years ago), but I'm using Illustrator since version 3 and it's one of my favorite programs. I use it for the creation of all my logos, drawings, icons etc.
Hope some of you have maybe better ideas on drawing such a shape. Or maybe if you have any great smart ideas on the creaton of other simple shapes. All useful ideas are welcome, thanks :-) The best ones will be considered for a new post.
Want to learn more?
A good and not expensive source to learn more about Illustrator, Photoshop, or web design is by joining the Tuts+ sites. You get access to the source files for just $9 a month. So your ONE membership gives you access to members-only content for ALL the Plus sites. I've written a tutorial for the Vector Tuts section.