How to Create Vector Gears

Hi people, I’m still alive and back for more tutorials.

I have seen tutorials on gears here and there but I still seek the fastest and easiest way, you really don’t have to learn super skills to do that kind of result, you just need imagination.

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• Software used: Adobe Illustrator CS3 – you may use other similar vector-based editing software but the instructions written are made to work well on Adobe Illustrator CS3

• Difficulty – Beginner

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In today’s tutorial I’ll teach how to create vector gears or cogs in Illustrator:

Ok then let’s rock, first select your star tool, then drag across the stage, but before you release it, here’s a couple of tricks that I want to share with you.

• Pressing Spacebar-Drag: re-positions the before releasing the mouse button
• Pressing Ctrl-Drag: modifies its outer points, useful if you want your star to be super pointy or fat-looking
• Pressing Shift-Drag, creates a star without rotation
• Pressing Alt-Drag Keep the sides of a star parallel
• Pressing Alt-Shift-drag, creates a star with parallel sides without rotation

In this tutorial, we’ll use a 10-sided star, use arrow up and down, to increase the sides of our star.

Hold Alt-Shift before releasing it, our end-result should look like the one below, before we continue lets make our fill transparent and our stroke 1px, black so that there’d never be a problem in expanding our object:

With our star still selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Round Corner.
Ok so why not use Filter > Stylize > Round Corners instead?
Here’s why, using the first technique, you can preview how much roundness our shape has become, but if you’re really sure about the roundness and an expert at calculating it, then you may do so, I still recommend using Effect.

Reviewing the roundness of our edges, let’s stop at this setting with 5 px roundness (depends on the size of the star). If satisfied let’s choose Object > Expand Appearance and continue with our next step.

Next let’s go to Object > Path > Simplify, from the opened window let’s choose this setting:Straight lines should be checked, Angle Threshold set to 0, then Click OK. Notice our round corners get straightened.

With our gear selected, open up Stroke or press Ctrl + F10 set the stroke to outside and stroke weight to 5 pt.

Pick the ellipse tool or press L, hold Shift-Drag to enable constrain proportion.

Open up Align or Shift F7 then select the 2 Objects; align it by pressing Horizontal Align Centerand Vertical Align Center.

Open up Pathfinder or Ctrl + Shift F9, hit exclude overlapping shape areas. Press Shift + F10or Stroke then set stroke to outside.

Pick a different color, make an icon out of it, set a 3d effect, your choice. Here are a few samples that you can make out of these gears.

There you have it, you can still experiment with the number of points and roundness, this is just a tutorial showing how it is done, try and experiment with the steps to get what you wanted.

I should have named this tutorial, how to make a gear in 3 easy steps: create a star, make its corners round, and straighten it. Hope you’ve learned something new from this tutorial.