Creating an ellipse
Next, you’ll draw an ellipse using the Ellipse tool (
) to make up the next part of the lamp. The Ellipse tool can draw perfect circles when you press and hold the Shift key as you draw, or it can draw an ellipse without a modifier key.
- Click and hold down the mouse button on the Rounded Rectangle tool (
) in the Tools panel, and select the Ellipse tool (). - Choose View > Smart Guides to turn them off. Next, you will create a shape with no Smart Guides turned on to see the difference.
- Position the pointer over a blank area of the artboard. Begin dragging down and to the right to draw a circle that isn’t very large (see the figure).
- Select the Selection tool (), and in the Transform panel, ensure that the Constrain Width And Height Proportions is turned off. Change the Width to 1.35 in and the Height to 1.2 in.
- Choose View > Hide Bounding Box.
- Choose View > Smart Guides to turn them back on.
- Click and drag the ellipse by the anchor point at the very top of the shape to the center, bottom of the smaller rounded rectangle. Release the mouse button when the ellipse snaps. Don’t worry about the position of your larger rectangle toward the bottom of the artboard. You’ll position that later on.
- Choose View > Show Bounding Box.
- Choose Select > Deselect, and then choose File > Save.
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Notice that you cannot see the size of the circle in the measurement tool tip, since the tool tip is part of the Smart Guides that were turned off. The green alignment guides are also not showing, since the shape is not snapping to other content on the artboard. Smart Guides can be useful in certain situations, such as when more precision is necessary, and can be toggled on and off when needed.
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The bounding box, as you saw in previous lessons, allows you to transform the shape. With the bounding box not showing, you can drag the shape by an edge or an anchor point without transforming it.
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