The Flower tools (there are two of them) let you “flower” a path around a point. That center point may or may not be on the path itself.
A Flower Path is actually a
Bind Path created by making multiple copies of an existing path
and then rotating them around a center point to evenly spaced positions. The original path becomes part of the Flower Path.
There are two ways (and two tools) to construct a Flower Path:
- By selecting the path to be flowered first and then
selecting the center
- By selecting the center first and then the path.
The Mark Button
is used to select either the center or the path. You can also restrict the orientation of the radius used for the
flowering with the Drag Constraint button. This would allow you, for instance,
to ensure that the flowering is done around a point that lies on a horizontal or vertical line with another point,
perhaps the center of the path. Regardless of which method you use, after the center and path have been selected,
the number of copies is set by the angle made by these three points:
- the selected center
- the selected point on the path itslef
- the current position of your finger
Rotate your finger around the center to change the number of copies.
As with other Bind paths, you have the option of creating a normal binding or a Layer Binding.
If you have trouble setting the exact number of copies, try using the Lock Button to lock in the angle before you
lift your finger from the page. One important note about Undo: The Flower Path tool actually creates MORE than one path.
It creates all the paths you generate by the flowering plus a Bind Path to bind them all together.
If you undo a Flower Path, you’ll first undo the Binding and then you’ll undo the
creation of each of the individual paths in the flowering until you get down to your original path.
Example:
Here’s the difference between selecting the path first and selecting the center first.