Just an alternate method for Jacob's steps 2-4: use Effect | Distort & Transform | Transform. That dialog enables you to select the anchor and the two copies needed in one swell foop.

You do need to expand appearance before proceeding to step 5.

Daniel:

Another simpler method-

Select the Polar Grid Tool (mouse down on the line tool and pick the right most button.

Click the artboard and enter equal W and H, 0 Concentric Dividers, 3 radial dividers, OK, and then either--

A- Use the Live Paint Tool to fill the segments

B- Use Pathfinder Palette Divide to break the circle up into separate pieces.

steve

I May have done something wrong, but it looks like divide will not work unless you ungroup more than once.

> There must be more ways.

Personally, I'd use the Polar Grid tool. Clickdrag, but don't mouseup. Press and hold the down arrow key until you have only one circle. Tap the left arrow key until you have only three radii. Press and hold shift to constrain the circular proportion, then mouseup.

But then I would be annoyed that the three pie slices have four points each. So...how do you make three 120 degree pie slices with only three tidy points each?

1. Polygon Tool: Mousedown at some pre-existing snap location. It could be the intersection of two guides, an anchorpoint of a path, etc. Drag, but don't mouse up. Tap the down arrow keys until the polygon has only three sides (an equilateral triangle).

2. WhitePointer: Select two of the triangle's anchorPoints. Click the Convert To Smooth button. Select the other anchorPoint. Click the Convert To Smoot button. (Why two operations? Because in Illustrator's lame Control Panel, the Convert / Cut Selected Points buttons disappear if all the points of a path are selected--more evidence that Illustrator doesn't know the difference between a path being selected as an object and merely having all its points selected.)

3. Select>Path>DirectionHandles.

4. ScaleTool: AltClick the snap-to location that was used in step 1. In the resulting dialog, enter 128.4%.

5. Ctrl-X (Cut to clipboard). Delete. Paste In Front.

6. White Pointer: ShiftClick one of the three pasted paths to deselect it. Delete (the other two are deleted.)

7. Pen Tool: Click one of the endpoints. Click the snap-to location. Click the other endpoint.

8. White Pointer: AltClick the path to select all of it. Scale Tool: AltClick the snap-to location. In the resulting dialog, enter 120 degrees, click Copy. Ctrl-D (Transform Again).

JET

Mass execution:

http://illustrator.hilfdirselbst.ch/Sonstiges/Sample_AI_Files/mass_exe cution_001.zip (AI 10 format, ca. 70 kb)

Here's an idea...
1. Draw your circle.
2. Activate your star tool. Draw a 3 point star.
3. Place your 3 point star exactly inside your circle, where the points touch the circle.
4. Get out your scissors tool. Clip each segment at the point.
5. Delete the star. Voila! 3 perfect segments.

OK Jacob:

With the Ellipse tool make a circle (e.g. W- 50pt, H- 50 pt).

With the Polygon Tool make a larger 6 sided polygon (e.g. radius 50pt).

With View> Smart Guides on (Ctrl + u) and the polygon selected, use the Direct Select Tool (white arrow) to click drag the polygon by one of its anchors to the center of the circle. Smart Guides will say center when you are on.

Select both the circle and the polygon and alt + click Intersect shape areas (top row, three from left) in the Pathfinder Palette. Now you have one piece.

Select the piece, select the Rotate Tool and alt + click the center anchor point. Enter 120 deg and click copy. Repeat this by Ctrl + D to get the third piece.

steve

Office productivity programs like Office apps do not natively support vector formats beyond the OS meta formats like WMF and EMF. Office cannot use PDF as spot vector graphics. Nor does it import .ai files and translate their contents into native vector artwork.

Office apps support the now rather dated EPS as an embedded or linked graphic object. But EPS assumes a PostScript printer, and is represented on screen and in non-PostScript print as the low-res raster preview it contains.

So you can try exporting the vector artwork as EMF. Whether the results are satisfactory will depend upon the specific content involved. If you do not find it to be satisfactory, then you are stuck with a raster format, the most versatile of which nowadays is PNG because it includes lossless compression, is not limited to an indexed color depth, and supports alpha channel masking for so-called "transparency".

JET

I used the Transform effect, Kathryn.

1) Draw a circle, diameter: 3 mm

2) Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform:

- Reference point: Bottom centre
- Copies: 360
- Scale horizontal: 100,4 %
- Scale vertical: 100,4 %
- Move horizontal: 6 mm
- Rotate: 16°

To my knowledge Word can import eps files, however on the screen you can only see a thumbnail of the eps file if there is one present. When you print to a postscript printer, Word will pass the eps file on to the printer where it will print at the maximum resolution of the printer.

Is it true that Illustrator doesn't have an object
'circle segment from angle1 to angle2' ?

In PostScript it's fairly simple (save text as *.EPS):

--------------------------------

%!PS-Adobe-3.1 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 560 560

/mm {2.834646 mul} def
1 mm setlinewidth

100 mm 100 mm translate
/R 90 mm def

1 0 0 setrgbcolor
0 0 moveto
0 0 R 0 120 arc
0 0 lineto
fill

0 1 0 setrgbcolor
0 0 moveto
0 0 R 120 240 arc
0 0 lineto
fill

0 0 1 setrgbcolor
0 0 moveto
0 0 R 240 360 arc
0 0 lineto
fill

0 0 0 setrgbcolor
0 0 moveto
0 0 R 0 120 arc
0 0 lineto
stroke

0 0 moveto
0 0 R 120 240 arc
0 0 lineto
stroke

0 0 moveto
0 0 R 240 360 arc
0 0 lineto
stroke

showpage

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Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann