Tangent Circle Preferences

Doubleclicking the Tangent Circle tool in the toolbox (or pressing the Enter key when the tool is selected) will bring up its preferences dialog:

Tangent Circle Preferences

1. Circle Center

When enabled, the circle’s centerpoint is drawn with a small cross while the circle is being created.

2. Circle Radii Lines

When enabled, lines showing the radii of the circle (from the center to the two tangent points lying along its circumference) are drawn while the circle is being created.

3. Color

Allows a choice of colors in which to annotate the circle’s center and/or radii lines, from among red, blue, magenta, green, black, and grey.

4. Snap Tolerance

The snapping tolerance for the cursor when locating the circle. If Smart Guides are turned on, the Smart Guides tolerance value is used if it is larger than the specified value.

5. Snap When Smart Guides are Off

When enabled, and Smart Guides are turned off, the cursor will still snap to paths using the specified Snap Tolerance.

6. Default Radius

Specifies the radius that will be used, by default, when holding Shift to enable Radius Locate Mode.

7. Ask For Circle Radius

When enabled, after releasing the mouse button on the second path segment, a dialog will be displayed allowing the radius to be numerically adjusted (see Tangent Circle: Tool Operation). However, the dialog will never be shown if the radius was adjusted by dragging a line from the second path segment.

8. Auto-Update Default

When enabled, changing the desired radius through the circle radius dialog will also change the default radius value, affecting future uses of the tool.

9. Add Points to Existing Paths

When enabled, anchor points will be added to the existing path(s) at the tangency points of the created circle. A dot appears next to the cursor to indicate that this mode is active. The preference may be inverted on the fly by pressing the Option/Alt key when using the tool.

10. Informational area

Shows a brief description of each preference control when the cursor is being hovered over it.