Drawing lines tangent to a circle
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hi guys
can a line be drawn tangent to a circle or what is the best way to fillet two linesthanks Andrew
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Hi Andrew,
Have a look at these two skippys. I think they answer you question.Cheers
Gidon
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Dear Andrew,
Drawing a line tangent to a circle is a little tricky as each circle is made up of a finite number of line segments (the default is 24). If you draw a circle and then use the line tool to draw a line touching the circle the inference engine will take you to either a segment end-point or a segment mid-point. If you snap to an end-point the line will turn magenta when your attached line is parallel to one of the line segments connected to that end-point. Strictly speaking (and for a 24 segment circle), to get a true tangent to the circle you should snap to a segment's end-point, draw the line parallel to that line segment and then rotate it 7.5 degrees about the end-point. Experiment!
Hope this helps,
Kind regards,
Bob -
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Hi Andrew, hi folks.
See attached SU file for ideas.
This is inspired by this site:
How to construct (draw) tangents to a circle through an external point - Math Open Reference
This page shows how to draw the two possible tangents to a given circle through an external point with compass and straightedge or ruler. This construction assumes you are already familiar with constructing the perpendicular bisector of a line segment.
(www.mathopenref.com)
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thanks all for the replies..i now have lots of ideas..
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Why complicate your life when the answer could be easy.
Draw a circle with any amount of edges.You now want to draw a tangent line to this circle.Chose any vertex, it connects two segments, go at the end of those and join them with the tape mesure tool, then slide a //guide line to your chosen vertex you now have a tangent.Et voila
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