illustrator question : how to draw a "line arc connector"

[superbigjay]

Hello, I'm learning illustrator and I'm trying to draw a "line arc connector".

I'm pretty sure there's an easy way to do this, but somehow, I could find it.

In visio, in the "visio extra/connector" templates, there's the "line arc connector".
with it, you specify the start and end of the arc and then you specify "the curve" you want.
You end up with a circle segment.

I'm attaching an example to show what I'm talking about...
as you see on the pic, all arc are a section of the circle...

In Illustrator, I manage to do something similar by:
- drawing a circle
- adding a line through it to identify my start/end
- using the intersect tool to separate the segments.
- removing the unwanted section

Do you know an easier way to do this?

Jay 

[Joystick Jerk]

It's not much easier, but you could draw the circle, use the little scissors tool and click on the spline on the two points where you want it to seperate, and then delete that seperated section.

[superbigjay]

thanks JJ,

What I'm trying to do, is to draw that "circle segment" for my CP art.
My CP is already cut and its "round edge" is 34 wide, and the "curve" is 2in depth.
I can always cut n paste from visio to illustrator and resize, but I'm pretty sure  it's
possible to do it with illustrator (just have to find how  )

with the "scisor" or "intersect" technique, you basically have to know the circle radius
to have exactly the right shape.

Jay

[Joystick Jerk]

What I did for the curved border on my CP overlay was use the Rounded Rectangle tool. When your using that, you can click and drag to form the basic shape of the border/edge/whatever. If you keep the mouse button down, you can then use the directional arrow keys to change the corner radius of the rectangle. Left/Right shrinks or expands the radius, and Up/Down adds either maximum corner radius or no radius at all.

If you want to have an exact measurement on the radius, you can just single click the rounded rectangle tool and you'll get a dialog where you can set the exact dimensions and corner radius.

[superbigjay]

thanks JJ,

I ended up using my circle + ractangle technique.

first, I found the circle Radius using this formula
AE • EB = CE • ED

In my case, the AE = Eb = 34/2
CE = 2
==> 144.5
The diameter of the circle is CE+ED = 146.5.

So I draw a circle (146.5x146.5) and a rectangle (34x2).
Then using the alignment tool (horizontal center + vertical bottom)

After, I used the intersect tool (path finder) to separate all pieces and deleted the 3 unused part to get my arc section


Jay