Graphic design tool question

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-07-27 11:13pm

I'm looking to make a 'code wheel' sorta thing; the sort of thing they used to use for copy protection in games, with the moveable card wheels that reveal different numbers. It doesn't need complexity (I'm going a 4-piece on with 3 dials allowing it to track three numbers up to 10) since it's for a board game, but I'm curious if there are software tools available to size circles, put circular-aligned text inside the rims, space them regularly for the smaller disks, etc. Surely this is simple when you know how?

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2008-07-27 11:17pm

Is Inkscape what you're looking for? You mean to print your code wheel thing and assemble it as a hardcopy, right?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-07-27 11:18pm

Old Plympto wrote:Is Inkscape what you're looking for? You mean to print your code wheel thing and assemble it as a hardcopy, right?

Yes exactly! I'm just not familiar enough with non-word, non-paint graphic apps to know where to start.

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2008-07-27 11:22pm

Stark wrote:
Old Plympto wrote:Is Inkscape what you're looking for? You mean to print your code wheel thing and assemble it as a hardcopy, right?
Yes exactly! I'm just not familiar enough with non-word, non-paint graphic apps to know where to start.

Awesome. When you've assembled the code wheel, post photos of it so we can see what it looks like and what board game it's used for.

Inkscape has almost the same functionalities as Adobe Illustrator, but it's a tad less intuitive to use IMHO.

But it's free so I can't complain there.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-07-28 12:13am

Okay, I can make a circle, make it a path, and attach the text to the path. Problem is, it's orienting the text wrong (the bottom of the text attached to the inner rim of the circle) and I can't work out how to turn it around (or space it away from the circle a bit). Should I make an invisible circle and somehow path around the outside of it?

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2008-07-28 12:46am

Never tried this before, so this is an impromptu experiment on my part: I just tested creating a curve with a downwards apogee, with the "Draw Bezier Curve & Straight Lines" tool, which is the topmost tool fully visible on the left column.

Then I wrote some text.

I selected both objects together and at the toolbar I selected Text > Put on Path

Then I turned down the opacity of the curve to zero and used the normal select tool to turn the text into position.

This what you looking for, Stark?

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2008-07-28 12:51am

And just in case you're looking to do the opposite, having the Belzier curve inverted and doing exactly the same thing I described in the previous post also works.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-07-28 01:00am

Ah, your first example shows what I did first time; the text is oriented wrongly to be read when holding the circle as a disk. Any idea if you can flip it, or it depends what tool you use? My understanding is the circles are just belzier curve segments anyway, so what determines which side the text attaches to?

Also, the help stuff says to increase the text spacing (horizontally) for a text selection you use alt and +/-, but this doesn't seem to work for me. Do you know if you can choose the node on the path to attach to, as it seems to default to the 'first' node (which may be determining which side the text attaches to). I'll have to mess around with this, because I'll need to ensure the different size disks have the text spaced so as to line up as circumference decreases.