LET THERE BE STARS!

LET THERE BE STARS! Or, Me Star Tool is broken....   Time: Approx. 20-30 minutes. One really intuitive interactive tool in DRAW is the Star Tool. You can make stars of all shapes and sizes, but, this Star you cannot make by using the Star Tool, and by following these simple steps you will also learn how to use the Transformation and Shaping dockers in a new way. In older versions of DRAW (5-8) they are called "Drop Down Menus". And finally we'll use the Blend Tool. So, before we start, make sure that the Transformation and Shaping Dockers are open, they can be found under Windows/Dockers. See Fig. 1. There are a lot of steps involved in this exercise, but don't get confused, I will do my very best to guide you clearly from the beginning to the finished product.
Fig. 1. Transformation and Shaping Dockers, and then, the Rectangle Tool.	Start by selecting the Rectangle Tool in the toolbox to the left at your workspace, and draw a rectangle about 75 millimeters high and 5 mm wide, (the size is not so important). Go to Transformation Docker, Rotate, second button from the left, type "90" in the Angle box and click the "Apply To Duplicate" button. (Fig. 2.) Fig. 2. The first two rectangles in place.
Now leave one rectangle selected, go to Shape Docker and select "Weld" that is where you see "Intersect" in Fig. 1. Press the button "Weld To", your curser will now change , and with this curser, select the other rectangle, now with this cross selected, go back to Transformation Docker, this time type "45" in the Angle box and click the "Apply To Duplicate" button again. (Fig. 3.) Repeat the steps Weld and Rotate again, but this time type "22,5" in the Angle box. (Fig. 4.) If it looks something near the objects below, you are following the steps correctly. Fig. 4. Two objects forming a star.           Fig. 5. "Star One". Now you see the star, but you can't have it. Go to Shape Docker, select object No.1, change the drop down to Intersect, check Original and Target Object, click the "Intersect With" button and click object No. 2. Eureca! there is your first star, let us name it "Star One". (Fig. 5.) If you can come up with a better name, you are free to use that.	Fig. 3. The two objects.
The next step will be to weld the two objects together, leave "Star One" in the center when you do this, if it's misplaced, you can easily correct that by selecting both objects and then press E and then C on the keyboard. Now select only "Star One", hold down Shift and drag to increase the size, (Fig. 6.) let go of the mouse button first, then the Shift button. Use the increased "Star One" to Intersect With the now Welded objects. There is your "Star Two". Select this final "Star Two"(Fig. 7.) and hold down Shift again, minimize by dragging towards the center, and before you release, press right mouse button and you'll have a pefectly centered copy right where you want it. Fill both with the color of your choice, (Fig. 8.) remove the outline and blend them together. (Fig. 9.)    Fig. 7. The final star "Star Two".      Fig. 8. Copy to center, fill and remove outlines.	Fig. 6. Increase the size of "Star One".
Fig. 9. "Star Two", filled with yellow and red, then blended. Fig. 10. The Blend Tool can be found in your Tool Bar, right below the Text Tool, select the center object, click-drag and let go on the outer object, done, and if you need to print your star, increase the number of steps blending to about 100-200, depending on the size of the final star, here I used 20. Fig. 11. With Blend Tool selected, you can type in the number of steps you want in your blend on the Property bar.