16 April 2008

F10 Gears: Drawing the Gears

While I am still thinking about putting back some blue on the Gears theme proposal for Fedora 10 (and, of course, while counting down the few days remaining until the upcoming Fedora 9 release) here is a short howto about drawing gears, so anyone can learn to make them.

In fact drawing gears is not hard at all, I cheat and use an effect included in the recently released Inkscape 0.46 (available both in F8 and F9) Effects > Render > Gears:

[fedora gears]


A few parameters to adjust (with Live Preview enabled to see their effect in real time) and we get a toothed wheel:
[fedora gears]


Now add a circle:
[fedora gears]


And use the Align and Distribute dialog to align it to the center (I used here "e;Relative to: Biggest Item"):
[fedora gears]


Then substract the circle from the wheel (you may need to upgroup once, as the Gear effect greated the wheel as a group):
[fedora gears]


Now to create spokes. Add a rectangle and align it to the center:
[fedora gears] [fedora gears]


Duplicate the rectangle and rotate it 90°:
[fedora gears] [fedora gears]


Select both rectangles and rotate them freely:
[fedora gears]


Select everything and do an union:
[fedora gears]


For the middle of the gear create a small circle, align it to the center and do another union:
[fedora gears] [fedora gears]


The hole for the axis is another circle aligned to the center and substracted from the wheel:
[fedora gears]


And the first gear is done!

Another gears coupled with it must have similar teeth, so use the Gear plugin and change only the number of teeth:
[fedora gears]


And do a complex mechanism:
[fedora gears]


You may want to increase the complexity further by adding some parallel gears, which may have their own parameters (as long as they are not coupled with the initial gears):
[fedora gears]


And that was all for today! Expect a follow-up (maybe next week) about coloring those gears.

36 comments:

  1. Damn you nicu!! You make it look so easy! I wish I could do stuff like that without having to copy other people :D

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  2. But it is that simple... creating graphics is not such voodoo stuff some may want to make you think.
    And with awesome tools at hand like Inkscape, it becomes even easier.

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  3. Hey thanks for sharing... Easy or not I've enjoyed seeing the tutorials. It's an awesome way of promoting the tools, the distro, and F/OSS.

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  4. when i try to align it no the middle it doesn't do anything!

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  5. @manal: surely you selected both objects and from the Align and Distribute dialog used "Relative to: Biggest item", just as in my screenshot?

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  6. please help me where to i fund the subtract for the center of gear???

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  7. @susan: select the inner circle and the gear (make sure the gear is an object, not a group) and use Path->Difference.

    I suspect your problem is grouping, when creating the gear with the effect, it is a group. So you have to select it and hit "ungroup" once.

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  8. @nicu thank you you were right it worked now thankyou heaps

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  9. Thank you, nicu!

    I hope it'll click for me some day, and that I can make things like this without having to copy. I'll contribute back to the community once I do. :)

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  10. Great! I am using Inscape for the first time and ... it seems that it will not be the last time ;-)
    The only problem I have is that I am not able to put the biggest gear at the very bottom... I have tried Object/Lower to Bottom, but without success ;-(
    Great job!

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  11. @kasienka: I wonder if your problem is related to groups or layers, maybe your object is in a group and you move it to the bottom of the group, or in a layer and you move it at the bottom of that layer

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  12. Thank you that help me a lot.

    I try to make bevel gears?

    all the best

    philsing from France

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  13. One way to make them beveled would be to use the effect I used in this 3D text tutorial: http://howto.nicubunu.ro/3d_text_inkscape/ or use advanced SVG filters: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Filter_Effects#Mockups_of_Filter_editing_and_related_dialogs

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  14. Very nice of you to show how to do this. You made it very easy to do.
    thanks
    george
    Houston, Texas USA

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  15. thanks for the tutorial
    when i make a circle first time it is just a little line so i move the circle round.
    i cant get it exact so i cant do 'difference'. is the a short cut to sort this out?
    thanks again, alex

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  16. i just reread that and it isnt clear.
    once i have moved the little circle node around the is stil a gap in the outline of the circle
    please help
    alex

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  17. ok its not that the circle is incomplete i cant seem to do 'difference' on gears?
    alex

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  18. i didnt do the ungroup!
    feeling quite stupid, thanks for the great tutorial
    alex

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  19. Thank you heaps for this
    can now make gears with a breeze for my uni work.

    Angel-FoX-crescent

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  20. A little question regarding this tutorial.
    How do you do if you want the cogwheel in 3D?

    The guide is absolutely superb by the way.

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    Replies
    1. You might be able to use a 2d image made in Inkscape to create a 3d face in a 3d shape editor, then with the face use the extrude tool and 'pull' the cogwheel out of the image.
      Extrude in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OszPcbecX50&feature=youtu.be&t=4m20s


      9436 f0cc f65f 1936 eb3d c991 911f 758a

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  21. This is an application for 2D graphics, not the best tool for 3D, all you can do is to fake a 3D look which is quite laborious, something like Blender would be a better tool.

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  22. On your first union step. mine will not unionize like yours. you dont see the cross section. just a circle with bumps. but maybe cause im using inscape .48

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  23. Thanks for the tutorial. Newest version of Inkscape, worked great.
    Now to clean it up in corel and laser cut it!

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  24. You do realize this a crap!
    I select all and do union and all I end up with is the first gear I started with!

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  25. I was not able to get this work either in the latest Inkscape. It will not allow you to ungroup so you subtract the circle.

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  26. wrong i'm using Inkscape .48 and it works for me!

    Thanks for the tutorial, it was a big help.

    Also FreeCAD is great for 3D

    SubMicro

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  27. To get it to union the best way is to go into the path edit mode and select it there.

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  28. Good tutorial, I was glad that Inkscape had this built in and I didn't have to add four times as many inner and outer vertices to a star... which was my original plan, thank google.

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  29. I'm using .48 and it works great. Really good tutorial, thanks! For people who say it doesn't work, you have to pay attention to do every step. Don't forget to subtract the centre from the gear, etc.

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  30. With inkscape 0.49 we have an improved version of the gears extension. It can do mounting holes, spokes and much more automatically. Currently it is called gears-dev, and is available from https://github.com/jnweiger/inkscape-gears-dev and based on http://cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=434&p=2594#p2500

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  31. Very good , I am also currently studying design using inkscape .

    Linux Mint Tips dan Apps

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  32. I'm using 0.91 and still working great, thanks

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  33. Hello, this weekend is good for me, since this time i am reading this enormous informative article here at my home. OMC 400-800 Stringer gears

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