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I need to cut an arc which has three colors say red, green and blue one after the other. This is for a circular game paddle.

I am using a differentiate on a square and a circle, then rotating the entire thing and deleting the longer arc-path and changing the color of the smaller-arc.

Is there a simpler and more efficient method to create a tri-color arc?

Here is a glimpse of my effort:

enter image description here My unsuccessful attempt

Now I need to make each section of the arc uniform. I want easy ways to use angle or specify size percent.

I found these formulas:

http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/geometry/gp15/circlearcs.htm

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  • What do you mean with make it uniform? maybe you could use masks?
    – Luciano
    Jul 1, 2016 at 8:31
  • @Luciano The length of each color must be same in radius . The one I drew apparently doesn't have uniform lengths.
    – Wally
    Jul 1, 2016 at 8:42
  • So the 3 colors must have the same lenght? I'm not an inkscape user, but if you know the total lenght of the arc (or the angle) can't you just simply draw a circle and cut / rotate the arcs?
    – Luciano
    Jul 1, 2016 at 8:49
  • @Luciano I'm unable to make the arcs centered. The centered. The center changes once I cut it.
    – Wally
    Jul 3, 2016 at 3:05

1 Answer 1

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  1. Start by drawing a circle using the Circle tool, whilst holding down Ctrl
  2. Turn on "Snap to object centre" & "Snap to rotation centre" and create guides that snap to the centre of the circle

enter image description here

  1. With the circle tool and circle still selected, you can calculate the arc length you desire by expressing it as a percentage fraction X 360. i.e. (25/100)*360 can be typed directly into the "End" box to give you 25% arc length which is 90 degrees. Note: the brackets are important.
  2. Make sure you click "Switch to arc" after you calculate the arc size.
  3. With the Selection tool, click the rotation point and move it to the guide intersection. We want to rotate and duplicate the arc around this point.

enter image description here

  1. Clone the arc with Alt+D, and click the arc layer again to make the rotation handles appear. Use the selection tool to rotate the arc around the pivot point, and press SPACEBAR to clone/stamp the arc around this point.

enter image description here

  1. Select all clones and Shift+Alt+D to unlink clones. You can now remove any fills and enter the arc stroke colours as you wish.

enter image description here

For different arc lengths: After you Unlink your arc clones, you can enter different values into the "End" box (whilst the circle tool is selected) for each arc. Make sure you move the centrepoints of the arcs into the intersecting guides & rotate each arc to join them together.

enter image description here

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  • Just what I was looking for. Now I hope somebody gives a Pie plugin based answer or find the plugin myself.
    – Wally
    Jul 1, 2016 at 13:39

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