- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you
how to turn hexagons into honeycomb.
Specifically, we'll take a single six-sided polygon,
and to show you what that looks like,
I'll go ahead and scroll up left here
and press "Control + Y" or "Command + Y" on the Mac
to switch to the outline mode
so that you can see we're starting with one
and only one rounded hexagon,
but thanks to the application of a bunch of
attributes and effects here inside the appearance panel,
we end up with this honeycomb effect right here.
Alright, so the first step as usual
is to go up to the file menu and choose "new from template"
or press "Control + Shift + N"
or "Command + Shift + N" on the Mac
then I'll go ahead and load my center guides document.
Now, I don't really need these guides
so I'll switch back over to the layers panel
and I'll turn off the guides layer.
And then I'll select the polygon tool
from the shape tool fly-out menu.
Now, everything's designed with specific parameters
in mind so I'll just go ahead and click
some place here inside the art board.
And for this technique to work,
you need the sides value to be set to six.
We need six sides for our polygon.
And you can really adjust the radius value to taste,
but again if you want to work with my values
then you want to go with 60 points to start.
At which point, go ahead and click okay
to create that initial polygon.
Next, go ahead and switch back to the black arrow tool,
which of course you can get by pressing the "v" key,
and we're gonna make a couple of initial movements here.
Now, for the best results,
you want to go up to the view menu
and make sure your smart guides are turned on.
And then go ahead and drag this guy
by one of the left hand anchor points
until it snaps into alignment
with its similar right hand anchor point
and press the "alt" key or the "option" key on the Mac
and then release in order to create a clone.
Alright, now press the enter key,
which because the black arrow tool is active
brings up the move dialogue box.
And I want you to notice this horizontal value,
you could write it down if you want to,
but the best thing to do is just go ahead and select it
and copy it by pressing "Control + C"
or "Command + C" on the Mac.
Your vertical value should be zero
and the idea is we just need to record
what this movement is.
Alright, with that value copied
go ahead and cancel out.
Then select that original polygon again
and drag it by its upper left anchor point,
this guy right here,
until it snaps into alignment with its bottom anchor point
and press the "alt" key or the "option" key on the Mac
and then release in order to create that clone.
Now we need to know what that movement looks like
so once again press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac
and remember this value right here,
the vertical value needs to be 90 points,
that's a pretty easy one to remember.
The horizontal value you don't really need to remember
because watch this,
if I click after it and enter asterisk two
and press the tab key,
it ends up being that same value we saw before.
And just to confirm that's the case,
I'll select that value and press "Control + V"
or "Command + V" on a Mac to paste it.
Those are exactly the same value.
In other words, 103.923,
you don't need to remember that
but they are the same value.
Alright, now let's cancel out.
Go ahead and grab these two guys.
There's a method to my madness, believe me.
Go ahead and select these two guys
and press the backspace key or the delete key on a Mac
to get rid of them.
Alright, now we're gonna take our base hexagon right here.
Go ahead and click its bottom anchor point
and drag it so it snaps into alignment
with the top left corner of the bleed like so.
And now let's go ahead and zoom out
by pressing control or command zero
followed by control or command minus.
And now we're gonna set in applying some transform effects.
So go up to the window menu
and choose the appearance command
to switch over to the appearance panel.
And then drop down to the FX icon
in the bottom left corner of the panel,
click on it, go up to distort and transform,
and then choose the transform command.
Alright, now we wanna start things off
by changing the horizontal move value
to that value that we copied.
So go ahead and select the existing value
and press "Control + V" or "Command + V" on a Mac
in order to paste in the new one.
Then turn on the preview checkbox
and watch this guy move over
to exactly the right position.
Alright, now we want a few copies
so go ahead and click in the copies value
and press the up arrow key
until you fill up your art board,
which is gonna happen at a value of ten
as you see here.
Then click okay to accept that effect.
Alright, now that we have one row
we need to repeat it offset down and to the right.
And to make that happen,
drop down to the FX icon,
choose distort and transform,
and choose transform.
Now, as soon as you do that,
Illustrator's gonna bark at you and say,
"wait a second.
If you want to edit the current effect
then just go ahead and double-click
on the effect's name in the appearance panel."
You don't really have to double-click,
you just click on it, but still
that is the way to edit the existing effect,
however, what we wanna do is apply a new effect.
So rather than turn on the don't show again checkbox
because I think this one is useful.
Just go ahead and click on "apply new effect"
in order to once again bring up
the transform effect dialogue box.
Then select that horizontal move value
and paste that value that you copied once again
and then enter "Slash + 2" afterwards
in order to divide it in half.
And now change the vertical value
to that vertical value that you remember
from when you dragged down and to the right,
which is 90 by the way.
It's actually one and a half times
the radius of the polygon.
So the radius is 60,
this movement's gonna be 90.
Turn on the preview checkbox and you will see
that that is exactly the movement we want.
However, we do want one copy to create a second row.
So make sure that copies value is one
and then click okay.
Alright, now we need to fill up the entire
art board with these hexagons.
And we'll do that by once again
dropping down to the FX icon,
choosing distort and transform,
and choosing transform.
Again Illustrator's gonna bark at us.
Again go ahead and click "apply new effect."
And then what you wanna do is
just change the vertical value to 90 times two.
So go ahead and enter asterisk two
after the value 90, press the tab key.
That's gonna give you a vertical value of 180.
Turn on the preview checkbox,
you'll see that that moves things into position.
You'll see that even better
if you click in the copies value
and press the up arrow key
so that you have some honeycomb going.
And then keep pressing the up arrow key
until you entirely fill the art board,
which happens at four copies.
At which point, go ahead and click okay
to accept that effect.
And now we just wanna adjust things a little bit
by moving this guy over
and I figure things look pretty good
if we press "Shift + Left Arrow" twice so one, two.
In order to scoot this original polygon over 20 points,
which creates a nice effect here inside the art board.
And to prove that's the case,
I'll go ahead and zoom in
so that we can see our precisely repeating hexagons,
in which each hexagon exactly abuts its neighbor.
And that is how you turn one and only one hexagon
into a pattern that absolutely fills up your art board.
In the following movies,
I'll show you how to turn this into honeycomb.