How to find mid point of a path between two anchor points in Illustrator

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I have a path in Illustrator, for example:- take a rectangle and I want to find the midpoint of one of the edges and draw a circle with the center.

There is already an answer on how to find the midpoint, where we place anchor points on the path, and then it places anchor points between each pair of the already existing anchor points.

I don’t want to put anchor points on the entire path just to find out the midpoint; it messes up all the design.

It seems basic enough, but I can’t seem to find the proper way to do this.

How to do this in Illustrator? If I can’t, then is there any other software other that provides this basic functionality?

Answer

  • Object > Path > Add Anchor Points (Yes I read the question… bear with me…)
  • Draw marker
  • Select marker
  • Edit > Copy
  • Edit > Undo (Removes marker)
  • Edit > Undo (Removes extra anchors)
  • Edit > Paste In Front (Pastes marker back in place)

This goes fairly rapidly with shortcuts. Add anchors from the menu, draw the marker then hold down the Command/Ctrl key and hit c,z,z,f – repeat.

The undo does not empty the clipboard or “undo” the copy step. A custom shortcut could also be assigned for the Add Anchor Points menu item (which doesn’t have one) if an even more rapid process is desired.

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If the object in question is a standard shape (circle, rectangle, etc.) then Smart Guides with snapping is generally easier.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Rahul , Answer Author : Scott

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