November 7, 1999

Creating a Metal Spring

Feeling blue? Well maybe this tip will put some spring into your step..... heh heh. Sorry, bad joke. Below is a great way to create a Metal Spring in FreeHand using Blends of gradient objects on a path . This could then be exported to Flash to be animated later.

Version: 7 and above

 
 


Tip idea provided by:Judy Arndt
Content written by Ian Kelleigh

1) First draw a loopy path that would look like a spring. You'll only be working with one segment of the spring, so create something you like and leave only about the above amount. To help you out, this shape is available as part of the downloadable file located below.

 

2) Next draw a circle about the same diameter that you want the spring to be thick. Above I drew about a 30 pt. circle.

Next give it a Radial or Gradient fill with colors of your choice. Above I used White and a dark bluish color Radial fill. Remove any lines.

Clone the circle and move it to the right.

 

3) Now select both circles and blend them together giving it about 200 or more steps.

 

4) Select both the coil line and the blend. Under the Modify menu go to Combine -> Join Blend to Path. You should see both shapes combine into one like shown above.

Special Note 1

If you get something like shown at left, select just the coil line by Option (Alt) clicking on the blend, and go to Modify -> Alter Path -> Reverse Direction.


Special Note 2

If you get something like shown at left, Go to the Inspector palette and turn off the option Rotate on Path. You can experiment more with this, maybe you'll find that it looks good for particular blends.

 

5) Now clone the coil and move it up until it overlaps to appear connected with the one below it. Power Duplicate to get even more coils.

 

 

You can adjust the gradient or radial fills' angles to change the highlight areas. Above I changed position of the radial fill in the circle in the back.

 

If you are bothered by the rough appearance of the blended circles and want to get a better idea of what it looks like, do a quick anti-aliased preview on the shapes by going under the Modify menu and choose Rasterize (see the tip Faking an Anti-Aliased Preview for more on this).

Below is a sample downloadable file that has all these parts for you to play with.

Example File Download (v7 format)

Macintosh Stuffit File fhsource_spring.sit
Windows Zip File fhsource_spring.zip

Of course there are many other ways to modify the spring besides the fill options. You can group it then stretch it vertically or squish it horizontally to make a long or narrow spring. For extra credit, import it into Flash and create some fun animations.