3/20/07

Placing circles by their tangent

The quick way, since the points are evenly distributed, is to use
ArrayCrv. Place one copy of the circle/point group at one end of the
scallop like this:

Since the scallop is a series of arcs, Select the circle and point and
start Orient. Set Scale to No. Put on the Near and Point osnaps, (or
Quad and Cen would work as well). Snap the first base point to the
circle itself (near or quad) and the second to the center of the circle,
or your point. Now put on Point and Cen Osnaps and place the circle
snapping first to the point on the scallop, then the center of the arc
the point lies on.

Then use ArrayCrv with 51 copies. Set the base point to the point where
the circle hits the scallop. You could also repeat the above Orient
routine with Copy=Yes, placing copies at each point and snapping to the
center.

In cases where the scallop is not made up of arcs, to place the first
circle, Offset the scalloped curve to the left by some reasonble
distance, say .25. Use the same technique as above but use the Perp
osnap for the second target point- so the first target point is one of
the points on the curve, the second is perp on the offset curve. - Pascal

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