[MLModel]

What's a good way to make a regular polygon with N sides, each of length L?

What about radius R (distance from center to vertex)?

(I realize L and R have a trigonometric relationship.)

Given a regular polygon what's a good way to change its size?

(Ignore line thickness.)

It seems like a basic capability a drawing program should have. The word "polygon" isn't even in the OmniGraffle manual or help.

What I've been doing is setting up a grid, drawing a horizontal line of the desired size, then duplicating it, while rotating and repositioning each duplicate. Seems ridiculous.

I've also thought of writing AppleScripts for this. I am hoping I am missing something built into OmniGraffle.

[whpalmer4]

Draw a horizontal or vertical reference line the exact size you want for your radius or edge length. Click on the Shapes tool. Bring up the Style: Lines and Shapes inspector (cmd-1). Select the adjustable star shape. Make one in your document. Now click the outer blue handle on the new shape and drag clockwise or anti-clockwise until you have the desired number of points/sides. Drag the inner handle to make the sides flat. Drag an object scaling handle (corner) until the size of the object matches your reference line, holding the shift key to preserve the aspect ratio.

Spend 10 minutes drawing a set of 1 each of every regular polygon you'll want and save as a stencil for future use.

[Joel]

There's also a handy regular polygons stencil available at Peter McMaster's website.