Photoshop/illustrator question: turning a rectangle into a circle.

**Shiznaught** · October 29th, 2006, 06:03 PM

I'm taking an adobe cs class at my local art college and my first project was drawing a dna double helix in illustrator. Here is what it looks like, which of course I could make into a longer strand by stringing one after another:

What I'm trying to do however, is to make a circular dna loop, like this one I found:

I'm wondering if there is any way to create some kind of formula that will maybe change the location of the anchor points in order to curve strand into a loop. Any ideas? Thanks for the input!

**OuTpaTienT** · October 29th, 2006, 09:03 PM

I would simply transform the object to make it smaller on one side then copy and transform it around the loop. Like this:

**ShuckyD** · October 29th, 2006, 09:19 PM

Very nice, hope he comes back to check it out, chalk another one up to OuT

**Shiznaught** · October 29th, 2006, 10:55 PM

So I see Outpatient still frequents these forums... jk. :-P

That's pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking, but it looks like your method yields more of a polygon than a circle. I need to make that straight dna shape into a circular shape:

My other alternative is drawing a vector shape based on that dna loop picture, but the picture is pretty low quality to bessier accurately.

**OuTpaTienT** · October 29th, 2006, 11:31 PM

Hmmm. I don't know. The only thing I can think of is to take a straight segment, turn it so it is horizontal, then do a warp - arc transformation on it. Then copy and transform the object to make the circle.

**Shiznaught** · October 29th, 2006, 11:54 PM

Hmm, that looks promising! I'm going to play around with this tonight. Thank you.

**Shiznaught** · October 30th, 2006, 02:15 AM

Not sure I can find the warp / arc tool in my illustrator cs... I'll look in class tomorrow.

**OuTpaTienT** · October 30th, 2006, 02:48 AM

From the menu: EFFECT / WARP / ARC

See attached image.

**OuTpaTienT** · October 30th, 2006, 02:54 AM

Oh, you probably already know this (or should), but after you do the arc effect you have to 'expand appearance' to make the actual object take on that warped shaped.

From the menu: OBJECT / EXPAND APPEARANCE

**Shiznaught** · November 1st, 2006, 02:33 AM

Here's the basic version of the design, which I was able to create using the arc tool:

There is some tweaking to do to make the illustration a bit more recognizable, but the curvature of the dna loop looks exactly like I wanted it to. Thanks for steering me in the right direction, OuTpaTienT.