The Art of Making Metal Pipes with Joints - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood August 1, 2004   1 To make the pipes in Illustrator, let's first specify grid parameters. Open Show Grid and click on it. Make sure Snap to Grid is turned on.   2 Next let's change the Preferences for Grid. Press Control+K to open and choose Guides and Grid. Under Gridline every, make the change to 24 pt and under Subdivisions, make a change to 48. Close it.    3 With the Pen tool selected, draw a straight through 3 grid sections.   4 Now draw a vertical line to match the above line.   5 Select the Arc tool.   6 Starting at the vertical line, pull upward and over to the horizontal line.   7 At this point select the Direct Selection tool and highlight the two endpoints at the horizontal line. Press Control+J to join them. Select Corner and close. Do the same for the other two touching endpoints.   8 Now draw two matching lines as before following the grid.   9 Again, select the Arc tool and draw in the second corner. Join them.   10 Select the two opposing endpoints and press Control+J and do the same for the other end.   11 We now have a perfect joint. At this point make a copy of the joint.    12 Create a rectangle with the Rectangle tool.    13 You can then draw out another section of pipe in the same manner. To add another section in the vertical, select both pieces and choose Rotate tool. Specify 90 degrees and Copy. Move into place. Change the colors to default which is black and white. Send to back the pieces that need to be sent. As you can see it is really simple to create pipes.   Copyright 2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved