The goal of this tutorial is to show you how to create a set of concentric circles with uniform line width using the Create Tiled Clones tool in Inkscape.
Make sure your object is selected and open the Create Tiled Clones dialog window (Edit | Clone | Create Tiled Clones...)
For this tutorial, I am creating 9 concentric circles. We don't want any of the preset clone styles, so just choose P1: simple translation from the dropdown. Set your rows,columns to be 1,9. Make sure the Use saved size and position of the tile checkbox is off (unchecked). The settings on the Symmetry tab should look something like this:
On the Shift tab, make sure all Shift X and Shift Y offsets are zeroed. Keep the Exponents at 1, and check the per column Exclude tile checkbox:
I wanted neat, even, concentric circles, so I set my per column Scale X and Scale Y values to 100% each. Again use an Exponent of 1:
Leave everything zeroed on the Rotation, Blur & opacity, Color and Trace tabs. Or not, if you want to mess with those settings. But in this tutorial, we'll leave them zeroed.
Click the Create button and you should get concentric clones:
Notice how the successive circles at this stage are evenly spaced apart (good), but have increasing line widths (bad). I haven't found a way to tell Inkscape not to do this for me, even when I try to turn off the Scale Stroke Widths Proportionately affect. :-/ If you know how to do this, I'd love to learn.
So, the rest of this tutorial will focus on making all stroke widths equal.
Select all of the circles:
Unlink them (Edit | Clone | Unlink Clone) or Alt+Shift+D:
Group them (Object | Group) or Ctrl+G:
Open the Fill and Stroke dialog (Object | Fill and Stroke...) or Ctrl+Shift+F:
Set whatever Stroke Style you want. I'm using a plain solid line with width 1px here:
And the final result:
There are many more weird and wonderful things you can do with the clone tool, and I'm only starting to fathom its depths. Until this morning, this tool scared me because nearly every time I tried to use it I would end up with many copies of something I didn't want. Finally with some experimentation this morning, I have tamed the beast! Well... found out where he lives and what he likes to drink, at least. If I have made a flub, omitted something crucial or just plain messed up, let me know.
:) Good to know, might be handy for future use, thank you!
ReplyDeleteHow do you make ring intervals even sized?
ReplyDeleteHi, after 9 years I had to run through this tutorial again to refresh my memory and confirm that it still works with the modern Inkscape; it does.
ReplyDeleteI am going to assume your term "ring intervals even sized" means the same as I do when I say "concentric circles".
The clone tool scales the whole object (including the width of its line) on each successive iteration, resulting in larger and larger line widths as the circles get bigger. This creates the effect that the ring intervals appear uneven, but the rings are actually evenly spaced. All you have to do is set all of the rings to have the same size line width. The tutorial above explains how to do that in the section after you click the Create button in the clone tool.