Drawing a Whole Bunch of Hex Screws in Adobe Illustrator

In this week’s 998th episode of Deke’s Techniques, we finally finish up the whole cloth subwoofer project by adding some hex screws to tighten everything down.

As you may recall, here is where we left off last week:

A partially completed subwoofer illustration


The final touches begin with a series of duplicated circles places around the rim of the speaker via the Rotate tool, some math (i.e. 360 divided by 8), and then the Duplicate command.

The Rotate dialog box does the math for you


After adding a drop shadow to the outer “screw” edges, Deke places hexagons within those circles using the same procedure.

The subwoofer with hexagons within the circles on the edge


And finally, a custom gradient applied to each hexagon creates the effect of a hole in which to put your hex screwdriver when you eventually find it our in that box of screwdrivers out in the garage. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

Gradients applied to each hexagon for depth


And thus our something from nothing subwoofer is complete.

Deke’s Techniques, swiftly approaching completion.

Next entry:Deke at the Adobe Illustrator Summit 2021

Previous entry:Here’s a Custom Van (icon) Drawn by Deke (in Illustrator) for Your Enjoyment (in Photoshop)

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