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I'm a little bit newbie to Illustrator, so sorry if my question is pretty banal.

Following art work is what I'd like to design:

enter image description here

This is the plan (that doesn't work!):

1 - Draw an empty circle with required stroke. (A ring, namely)

2 - Erase some part of that ring and divide to to four parts.

3 - Add arrow heads to both sides of each part.

My main problem is conversion of a circle to its corresponding ring. Here is a question, which might be similar to my problem, but it didn't work. I think I should transform the shape (circle) to a path, then it will become a ring and applying steps 2 and 3 would be possible. Even this video didn't help too much because I can't modify the tickness of the final ring by Stroke > Weight

Could you give me some advice to find the steps?

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4 Answers 4

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Your original thinking works. Here it is tried.

enter image description here

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  • Oh this one is more accurate. Thank you! I am also learning something new. Did you turn your arrow into a brush like I did?
    – CheeseCake
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:23
  • Amazingly expressive... Much appreciated for your contributed.
    – user83441
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:28
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    Keeps the correct form of the circle, easy to repeat and remember, and quick to execute. Very nice answer.
    – Geoff Ball
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:29
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enter image description here

Make your basic shape with arrow headed Go to the brush tab or Press F5 click on new brush enter image description here

Select Pattern Brush and press ok Name the brush as you wish In the spacing 25 and Fit options Add space to fit and press ok Make a circle remove the color and just apply the stroke.

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  1. Draw your circle and ensure it's selected.
  2. Go to Object > Path > Add Anchor Points, and repeat it another 2-4 times (this part, you might need to judge with your own eyes; I did it a total of four times in my example). I get this:

Circle with several additional anchor points.

  1. With the white arrow tool, click the top anchor point and delete it.

Circle with top anchor point deleted.

  1. Repeat step 3 with the right, bottom, and left anchor points, leaving this:

Four strokes in the shape of a circle.

You can now select each path to add the correct stroke and arrowheads as desired.

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    No problem. Having seen user287001's answer, I think it's the better choice in this particular case, but it's always nice to have multiple approaches to things.
    – Geoff Ball
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:28
  • You are considerably right. Under the aegis of you guy's kindness, I've just learnt a lot of things from Illustrator.
    – user83441
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:30
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    This approach is very useful when I like to have a non-symmetric formation of the arrows with unbalanced coverage of the shape's boundary... Really useful...
    – user83441
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:35
  • @Roboticist using dashed strokes isntead?
    – joojaa
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 11:25
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I'm pretty sure there's plenty of other ways to do it but I would take my arrows and turn them into an art brush and then, I'll make a circle and make sure it has no fill and has an outline and use that art brush I just made that way the arrows will follow the outline of the circle.

Here are screenshots on how I did it:

Basically, during the first step, I made 4 arrows all in all.

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

Make sure you make 4 arrows in the beginning. I initially started with 2 and it didn't quite work.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if it sounds confusing. I will be glad to help you out some more.

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  • Thanks in advance. Art brush sounds to be a very powerful tool. I need experience that, extensively.
    – user83441
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 5:26
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    if you make the bounding box shape a bit bigger (any transparent box) Then it would make this solution perfect no matter the size of the circle. see this image
    – joojaa
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 11:23
  • I honestly did not think about that option. I honestly probably never have done any tinkering around the bounding box. I'll give it a try. Thanks!
    – CheeseCake
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 22:49

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