Transforming with rotate tool but keep the object position fixed?

Question

How to Rotate the stars around the circle that keeps the star position fixed?

I am trying to make a logo and trying to rotate the Stars but My the desired result is like this.

But the result that I am getting is like this.

Could somebody guide me on how to rotate the stars but stars with fixed position?

Answer 1

If you don't want the stars to rotate as they go around the circle, you can create a Scatter Brush like this, and apply it to a circle.

Answer 2

• Create a 12-faced polygon.
• Create a star and a circle of the same size. Center these to each other and make a group.
• Duplicate the group 12 times in outline mode so that the centers of these circles overlap the points on the 12-faced polygon.
• Delete the circles and the polygon, keep the stars.

Answer 3

Place copies of a non-rotated star to the wanted places. You can mark the wanted places for ex. by making a 12-gon, 12 cusp star or by rotating & copying straight lines.

You have used different 5 cusp star than Illustrator's default star. I drew one for tests. A placement example:

Select the star prototype. Turn "Show center" =ON in the Attributes panel. Make copies and drag them to the right places by dragging the centerpoint. They should snap if you have option View > Snap to point =ON.

(NOTE: the shown centerpoint is actually the center of the bounding box. It's a little different than the center of the mass which is the crossing of two different symmetry axles of a star)

Group the lines and keep them until you are sure everything is centered properly. You can make them invisible in the layers panel. Also group the stars as soon as you have placed them.

Not asked: You will probably see another problem. It's the apparent non-symmetry, if you place a circle in the middle of the stars:

The center of the circle is at the crossing point of the placing lines and it clearly seems to be at too high. I tested, does it help if the stars are placed by using their mass canters instead of their bounding box centers. It didn't help, the circle seemed to be at too low.

I guess you must finally move the grouped stars upwards purely subjectively. For comparison there's the subjectively fixed version in the right:

Answer 4

I always find it rather funny that people dont know that you can actually move the point about which to rotate (also, skew, scale, mirror) if you use the rotate tool*. The rotate tool is the first transform tool in the toolbox (R).

1. First select what you want to rotate,

2. either:

   1. click on the screen where you want the rotation to happen about. Then move the cursor on where you want to grab the rotation and drag to where you want it. The benefit of this method is that it can align lines accurately (see image 1). If you want to copy the image then press alt/opt down after you start dragging.
   2. If you want to do numerically accurate rotations then alt/opt click on the center this opens the numeric dialog. You can now type how many angles you want between items then hit copy. TIP: You can type 360/8 to let illustrator calculate the angle.

3. Then hit ctrl+D to repeat the transform until you have a circle (or as many as you need).

Image 1: method described above (image taken form here)

Learn to use the rotate tool it can solve so many other geometric problems you are going to have. For example align things (see image 3 below), form more practical examples see this, this, here

Image 2: Rotate tool can do so much more for you

* Move tool is really superior to the selection tools rotation option. Also illustrator didn't originally have a selection tool like powerpoint.