Need help creating hexagon shape with 6 equal sides.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daniel
  • Start date Start date
D

Daniel

How in God's name do I creat a hexagon shape with 6 equal sides? All I need
to do is have all the sides of a hex the exact same legth, but it seems
impossible to do. The program starts the shape with all equal sides, but if
you try to stretch the image it goes crazy. Anyone know a certain way to do
this to get equal sides? Thanks you for your help.
 
Hi Daniel

The simplest thing to do is make the height & the width the same and this
will give you 6 equal sides. How to check/change height & width depends on
your version...

Lucy
 
Hi John

I was going to suggest that then I got it into my head that that didn't give
you equal sides - I even got out my ruler & measured on screen (not very well
obviously). So I thought about how I used to make them with a compass (I say
'I' of course I mean Euclid) and decided a circle has a fixed diameter so
height & width should be equal, completely forgetting that the hexagon
doesn't reach the top of the circle if it reaches the sides ... <hangs head
in shame>

Daniel - completely ignore my first post. In my defence, I am blonde.

<goes to sit in corner with dunce cap on>
Lucy
 
Draw an autoshape line horizontally to the length of one side. Copy and
paste. Rotate the second line, using Shift to constrain it to 15 degree
movement to achieve 60 degrees. Position it at the end of the first line.

Copy and paste the second line. Flip the copy vertically and position it
at the other end of the fist line.

Group the three lines. Flip the group horizontally and position with the
first group.

Group the whole thing.

Click and stretch as needed.

Worked for me!

Brian.
 
Thankyou everyone for your help. I ended up doing what Brian said and just
make it out of lines. Nothing else seemed to work correctly. Amazing how
with all the features of this program it can't make a perfect hexagon. I
needed perfect hexes so that they would fit together and not have a bunch of
gaps. Thanks again everyone.
 
Draw a pie chart with 6 equal sements, ungroup it, then use connectors to
join up the lines. Then all you have to do is delete the pie chart segments
to have a very quick and accurate hexagon.

Martin
 
John's explanation on holding down the shift key while resizing the hexagon
works and is able to fit the hexes together. Have you tried it out?
--
Shawn Toh (tohlz)
Microsoft MVP PowerPoint

Site Updated: Jan 01, 2008
(Amazing PowerPoint animations, artworks, games here)
http://pptheaven.mvps.org
PowerPoint Heaven - The Power to Animate
 
I may be crazy, but you simply have to press 'Shift' while drawing the
Hexagon (Autoshade) and all sides will be exact... As per John's suggestion.

If fact you can also use 6 triagles if you want pieces, simply use the
'shift' key when you draw it and the 'shift' key whe you rotate the objects
into place. (recommend using the grid and snap to grid as well).

Martin - interesting out of the box thinking!
 
After my complex method I can only say that using the autoshape hexagon,
in combination with the shift key for a perfect shape and sizing and the
Alt key for free movement was soooo much easier! (:-))

Brian.
 
John,

It will never be exactly the same when stretched/rotated. The issue is that
our screens are not "square". Assuming you are running say 1024 x 768
resolution (4 x 3 ratio) and draw a shape that is 2" x 2" PowerPoint
(DirectX) draws it on the screen and there is some approximation on the
actual line lengths. Its all but impossible to find an exact width that
will give you an exact height unless you hit an exact 4 x 3 ratio. It will
always be off a pixel or two in one direction. This is especially true of
lines drawn at an angle on the screen. Toss dithering into the mix and you
begin to see how it can be off visually.

To see this in a more pronounced way, create a shape that is exactly 2" by
2". Now rotate the object 90 degrees. See the difference?


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCPro, PFCMedia and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com
 
To see this in a more pronounced way, create a shape that is exactly 2" by
2". Now rotate the object 90 degrees. See the difference?
Click to expand...

No ... what am I looking for?
 
John Wilson said:
Following Austin's trick try rotating a "regular" hexagon 60 deg and see the
problem!
Click to expand...

I meant the square shape but yep, hexies are certainly hexed.

Draw a "regular" hexagon with shift held down and PPT gives you a shape whose
height and width are not equal. The one I'm playing with right now is 4.33 by
5".

If you make height and width equal, say 5" each, it distorts the hexagon.

OTOH, if I leave the height and width as-is after drawing the shape with shift
held down, I can copy and rotate them by 60 degree increments and they nest
nicely to one another.

So what does 'regular' mean in MSpeak, d'ya think?
 
OK OK we are all crazy....

A true hexagon (equal sides and ofcourse angles) never has equal Height and
Width as a shade.

The ratio of a hexagon is 1:0.866 (and Yes a circle should touch every
corner of a hexagon)

PowerPoint however draws a hexagons at a ratio of 1:0.865
(ie a hexagon with the long side of 10cm will equal 8.65cm, not 8.66cm as it
should. Powerpoint draws in 'points' and I suspect a rounding issue is
involved here.

Solution (Please test this on your machines and see if is solves the
probelm, it works on mine):
1. Draw a hexagon using autoshape
2. resize hexagon, turn off lock aspect ratio, set width (or longest
bounding box edge) to 10cm and height (or shortest bounding box edge) to
8.66cm.
3. Resize object again, turn lock aspect ratio on.
4. Resize as required.

This is as close as you will get.

There is a problem with the 60 degree ration solution, as because it have to
move from point to point, it will never actually rotate to exactly 60
degrees.

Ok.... I am over hexagons...... goodnight
 
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