Hi all.

I am designing a clock without hands. Instead of hands, there will a dial for hours, and a dial for minutes. Each of these dials will rotate independently. The numbers at the top of the dial will represent the current hour / minute.

The attached .svg shows my current state.

I used the clone function for the Hour #'s because I want to play with different font types, font sizes, and different horizontal and vertical stretches of the font, simultaneously affecting all hour #'s. Unfortunately, the clone function will not enable me to change each of the numbers independently. Is there a method of achieving the functionality I am looking for, with each Hour # set to a different value?

I also am having a bit of a problem relinking my clone for the Min #'s. I went into preferences and changed the setting that I believe would assign a new master when I copied the Hour #'s layer, but it did not do what I expected. I can probably figure that one out myself, but if you have ideas, still appreciated.

Thanks!
MML

Welcome MML!

I don't think you can relink clones after you've broken the links to their original.

I'm not sure I understand the situation entirely. What if you typed all the appropriate numbers for the dials? By selecting them all at once, you could change the font type and size all at once.

The part I don't understand is the "stretches". In your image, I see that the numbers look like they've been stretched. But I don't understand is why they need to be stretched? I also don't understand why there's a space between the 1 and 2?

Thanks for the welcome, Brynn.

Wow! Yes, I can break the clone, type in numbers at each position, and by selecting all, change font type and size simultaneously. Thanks!

The only part left is the stretch. I need that because I am still playing around with the proportions of the dial, the size of the hours versus minutes, etc, and I need to be able to stretch either the height or width of the letters to get the effect I want. I really want control over that proportion.

Regarding the space between the 1 and the 2, I do not understand what you mean... On my computer, the 1 is next to the 2 in each "12". There is no extra space.

Regards,
MML

Regarding the space between the 1 and the 2, I do not understand what you mean... On my computer, the 1 is next to the 2 in each "12". There is no extra space.

Hhm, well maybe it's just a difference between our screen size/res or something. What I see is each wedge has "1_2" (I added underline to be clear about the space) so that the 2 in each wedge is closer to the 1 in the wedge to the right, than it is to the 1 in the same wedge. So that if there were no wedges or lines, it looks like "21_21" etc. all the way around.

Regarding the stretch, it sounds like simply using different size fonts for the hours and minutes doesn't do enough to achieve what you want?

When you say "playing with proportions of the dial" I assume you mean that it will always be a true circle, so you're really just trying circles of different sizes. As long as the numbers will always be in a true circle, you could probably use pattern along path. By placing the numbers along a circular path, you could simply scale the circle larger or smaller. Oh! Or actually, let's see.....no it doesn't look like you used pap.....you must have rotated each clone? You might have an easier time with pap. There's both an extension and an LPE, with instructions in the manual for both.

Uummm.....actually that might be trickier than I thought..... Actually using pap, it will be hard to have each number centered in each wedge. You could use spacing, kerning, and Space between letters setting, to achieve it. But it would be tricky, and probably too tedious for experimenting with different size circles. .....although once you got the numbers centered properly, and precisely, they would stay in the proper place when scaling the circle. A couple of years ago I was asking about having circle-related alignments and/or distributions added to Align and Distribute dialog. This would be a perfect expression of that need. I don't think I ever officially requested it though.

Still doing a lot of assuming here, if this is to be a real 12- or 24-hour clock, you'll certainly have some numbers of 1 digit and some of 2. Is the stretching meant to address that? If so, this can be achieved in a different way, as well. Maybe a few different ways, so I won't offer details until I'm sure. Ooohh, I found the original for the clones, so I see that they don't have a space between them. Probably the stretching is causing that effect.

Well anyway, let us know how it goes

for stretching each number around the clock face: select all the numbers, select Object->transform from the main menu, choose Scale tab, and tick "apply to each object separately" checkbox. Now you can try in this dialog applying various scaling factors. undo (CTRL-Z) each time if the scaling is not suitable.