Divide circle in half in Inkscape

Question

I am working in Inkscape and have two concentric circles which I want to divide into semi-circular arcs. I placed a line midway between and tried "Cut Path" but it did not work:

I tried converting the circles to paths and trying cut path again and it still did not work.

Answer 1

I determined the problem.

The "cut path" function in Inkscape requires exactly two objects. If the user has 3 objects selected then the program does nothing.

In my case I had two concentric circles and the line, so I was selecting 3 objects.

The solution is the following:

1. Drag a guide from the ruler until it snaps to the center of the circles

2. Draw a rectangle that is larger than the circles above them

3. Extend the rectangle until it snaps to the guide (the rectangle should now cover half the circles).

4. Select the rectangle and one of the two circles

5. Do Path / Division to make a closed shape or Path / Cut to make an open shape

Answer 2

Instead of a line, try a rectangle that covers the whole half circle. Then select the rectangle first and the circles afterwards.

Path -> Cut and the rectangle disappears, and the circles are cut at the rectangle edges.

Answer 3

There are many solutions:

• Draw your rectangle, but before Division duplicate it, to do the analog division with the second circle (which is, by incident, in backgroundcolor, if I understand your image right.
• First Divide the inner circle from the outer one, and then do the divide by rectangle.
• Mark both circles, and combine them to a single path (this will unify them to the same color, so is probably not what you want in this case). They don't need to touch or overlap each other to be combined. Then you can divide them with a single rectangle.
• Instead of two circles make a single, but thick circle shape. Then transform this shape to a path, then do the divide.
• Draw half circles by changing the circle typ just from start.
• Draw a half circle contur with very thick border and convert it to path if needed.

Depending on the precision needed, which tools you prefer to use and what you like to do with the result, you might prefer the one way or the other.