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I'm brand new to Illustrator CC, and while I've gotten a few things working well, I can't seem to get spherocylinders working. A spherocylinder looks like this:

Spherocylinder!

Easy, right? It's just two semicircles and the area between them. The problem is that I need several lengths of these suckers, at various angles. I can create a 2d one in Illustrator using the shape builder tool, and they look like I'd expect, but then I run into problems when I try to make longer ones. Very quickly, the aspect ratio on the ends gets completely destroyed, and again, I need something of constant width, but variable height (make the spherocylinder longer only). Is there a way to do with with the shape creation tool?

I've also looked at using rounded rectangles, since when the corners are 100% rounded, that's exactly what I want, but again I have problems constraining the width to only be one value.

I'd use two circles and construct them on the fly in my graphic, but then I need the tangent lines between them, which is a huge pain in the ass to construct. I've got to make 10s (if not 100s) of these stupid things, so anything that takes too much time basically isn't worth it at all.

So, how do I create one of these in Illustrator of variable length, but fixed width?

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    You should just be able to use a regular Live rectangle with a large enough corner radius.
    – Cai
    May 3, 2016 at 17:39
  • I finally got this working, where I could make sure that the corner radius didn't change (nor the width) of the rectangle. So thank you! May 5, 2016 at 15:56
  • You can answer your own question if you think it will help anyone else :)
    – Cai
    May 5, 2016 at 16:05

1 Answer 1

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Have you tried using the scale tool? I don't fully understand what you're aiming for, but whenever I get stuck with widths and heights I use the scale tool. Here is a link to help: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/scaling-shearing-distorting-objects.html

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    Hi Shorouq! Welcome to GDSE. We follow a strict Q&A format (as opposed to a forum format), and your answer doesn't really answer the question. You can visit our help center to read more about how the site works. Don't get discouraged, though! We have a lot of un-answered questions that would greatly benefit from some input!
    – Luciano
    May 4, 2016 at 8:21

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