Graident Fill Patterns along curves and Corners

[MrWalsh]

I have some piping elbows that I want to make look as realistic as possible with the gradient shading. I started out with two circles, a large diameter and an inner smaller diameter circle. I created line segments of 15° for the entire circle (lines rotated at 15°). I then placed the lines over the circles and fragmented this object. I applied gradient shading to one of the 24 segments. To get a 45° elbow, I have to use 6 segments. With the existing gradient options, I can only apply a vertical or horizontal gradient shading to the segment. That is fine for the segments on either end of the 45° elbow, but for the remaining 4 inner segments, the present shading options do not give me the shading I want to present to make the shading look realistic. What I have done is take the first segment, make a copy and then rotate it by 15° (or -15°) and place it beside the first segment I shaded. I then make another copy of the first segment with gradient shading and rotate it 30°. I then place this segment beside the second shaded segment. I continue with copying the first segment and increasing the rotation by 15° each time until all 6 shaded segments are in place. The trouble I am having is to get the segments to line up properly with the segment beside it. It takes a lot of work with the size and position window to get the segments to join together. It looks pretty good close up, but when I zoom in or out, I can see that there are small spaces between the segments and not every zoom position shows the spaces, but you do notice them while zooming. Is there a way that I can get all the segments with gradient shading to line up tightly without spaces as in the orignal circle before I fragmented it? I have attached the examples that I am talking about.

[Yacine]

An image is worth a 1000 words?


PS: forgot to explain the first step: rotate the initial circle with all the shapes, so that the segment you want to duplicate is on top (12 o'clock), then join the segment to get a symetric bounding box.

Erratum: It's "its", not "it's". And I should have written 360/15-1, instead of 360/24-1.

[MrWalsh]

That will work perfectly, your response / solution was clearly explained.

The response was amazingly fast as well.

Thank You for your directions / help with this question.

[wapperdude]

@ Yacine: clever!