Concentric Half Ellipses

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1

I’m trying to draw a glyph consisting of two contours: an outer half-ellipse and an inner half-ellipse which is Boolean “subtracted” (excluded, in FontCreatorspeak) from the outer one. Unfortunately, despite my use of the snap tool, I always wind up with a “fringe” in the resulting glyph. Check out this image:
ellipses-1.gif
What’s weird is that the fringe is not visible when I use it as a font. It is visible when I save anything containing the glyph as a bitmapped image. For example if I use the font in an Illustrator file and export it as a BMP, then the fringe is visible in the BMP. If I use the font in Word, the fringe is not visible.

What’s causing this fringe, and how can I get rid of it? I can’t pick it with the mouse. It’s like the fringe is there but not there.

Thanks in advance!

2

A way to produce the required shape is as follows.

Draw the two ellipses.

Select the inner ellipse.

Edit Change Direction

Double-click on white space so as to display the points of both ellipses.

Click on the square at 9 o’clock on the outer ellipse.

Hold down the shift key of the keyboard and click on the square at 9 o’clock on the inner ellipse. Two squares are now highlighted.

Now, right-click on the square that was just clicked and a menu will be displayed: click on Join contours.

Now highlight the points to the left of the vertical that goes through 12 o’clock and delete them.

Thus there is the desired shape.

I hope that this helps.

William Overington

29 May 2009

3

The fringe is a hairline at the edge of the ellipse. Instead of one contour, you still have two. Select the middle one and move it slightly to see the problem.
Cut Ellipse.png
Draw a pair of concentric ellipses and cut them in half with the knife tool (Pro Edition only). Hold down the shift key while using the knife to constrain the cutting angle. William’s method is the easiest way if you’re using the Home Edition.

4

Thanks to you both! I tried the Knife tool approach, and it worked very well.

Needless to say I’m still getting the hang of FontCreator. For the most part, I’ve found it to be very easy to use. I suppose I’d do better if I read more of the online help!

Thanks again!