Useful Geometric Techniques for Modelmakers

Useful Geometric Techniques

by Andy Slater Let me begin by saying congratulations for opening this document. Many people run a mile at the first mention of geometry which is unfortunate because there are a many useful geometric techniques and what I've tried to do with this document is to gather a few of them together.

Testing for right angles

Testing for right angles is probably the best place to start as right angles, or 90 angles, are pretty much fundamental as far as geometry is concerned. The easiest way to test for a right angle is probably to use a set square or a protractor but here are a couple of tricks just in case you don't have one to hand. The first trick is to use a piece of paper. Don't be tempted to assume that the corner of the paper is a right angle because it might not be. However, if you carefully fold the paper in half, the fold should be perfectly straight. Now fold the paper in half again such that the folded edge is divided into two and the corner that you've made should be a perfect right angle. The second trick is to use the 345 triangle of Pythagorean fame. I'm not sure that this is too useful for modelling but it's worth knowing. All you need to do is to measure 3 units along one side of the angle that you want to check and 4 units along the other. The diagonal distance between them will be 5 units if the corner is a right angle. The important point here is that the 'units' can be anything you like: centimetres, feet, lengths of your garden spade, i.e. whatever you have to hand.

Dividing a line into equal portions

There are occasions when you need to divide a surface into equal portions, for example if you wanted to paint stripes on it. I've seen people struggle with this and having observed my father working with wood from an early age, the solution to this problem was practically second nature to me. Let's assume for example, he'd measured a piece of wood and found it to be 17 3/8 inches wide and he wanted to divide it into 4. Now you could do the maths and try to measure the result across the piece of wood but a much simpler method is to put the ruler diagonally across the wood so that you are measuring a diagonal line 20 inches long. Marking the wood at 5 inch intervals is now simplicity itself.

Finding the centre of a circle

I never saw my dad do this and it's something that I'd struggled with on a number of occasions until it suddenly dawned on me that the techniques already outlined can be employed. Imagine that you have a circle whose centre you need to find. Pick two points on the circumference and measure the distance between them. You need to find the centre of this line so your best bet is to juggle with your end points

as previously described so that the centre is easy to find. Now that you have the centre of the line, draw a line through it at right angles to the first line. By it's nature this second line MUST pass through the centre of the circle. Obviously at this point you don't know exactly where the centre is, you just know it's somewhere along this second line. However it should also be fairly obvious that if you repeat this procedure using a different two points on the circumference of the circle that will also produce a line that passes through the centre of the circle.

Bisecting a line with a pair of compasses.

Most people already seem to be aware of this but it's worth mentioning as the technique is used later and if you don't know how to do it you'll be stuck. Basically the technique uses a pair of compasses to find the centre of a straight line. All you do is to set the compasses to a measurement which is greater than half the length of the line (just guess) and drawing a couple of arcs with the point of the compass on one end and then the other. The arcs will meet at two points. Join these points with a straight line and you will find that the line cuts across the centre of the original line at 90 degrees.

Dividing a circle into segments

As we are able to find the centre of any circle we should ever meet we might find it useful to be able to split it into a number of equal segments? Different methods can be employed depending upon how many segments you want. I'm not going to insult you by telling you how to split a circle with a known centre into 2. As for splitting it into 4, now that you know how to measure right angles and how to bisect a line with compasses you have two methods for solving this little problem. 8 pieces are trickier. The way to do it is to split the circle into 4. You now have to split each of these sections in half. You will notice that the lines dividing the circle meet the circumference such that joining them together would draw a square. If you find the centre of one of the sides of this square (by bisecting it) and draw a line from that point through the centre of the circle it will split that segment of the circle in half. The same procedure can be used to split the circle into 16, 32, 64, etc. Another useful circle splitting procedure uses a pair of compasses to split the circle into 6: Set the compasses to the radius of the circle. Now choose a point on the circumference and put the point of the compasses on your chosen point and mark two more points on the circumference by rotating the compasses. Now move the point to of the compasses to one of your marks and mark a further 2 points. You will notice that one of these marks is over the place where the point of the compasses was last time. Continue around the circle until you have 6 points marked around the circumference. Joining these up splits the circle into 6. Alternatively you can just join 3 of them to the centre to split

the circle into 3 and by employing the same method that you used to split 4 segments into 8 you can split 6 into 12, 24, 48, etc.

The Golden Rectangle

The Golden Rectangle is a phenomenon that I came across some time ago for drawing rectangles that are 'pleasing to the eye'. Basically the idea is that if you draw your rectangle so that the lengths of its sides are in the ratio of 1:1.618 i.e. the longer side is 1.618 times the length of the shorter side. I don't know why this should be 'pleasing' however a good many designers seem to be aware of 'the golden rectangle' and employ it for their own purposes. If nothing else this must surely lead to it having a certain familiarity. It is also worth knowing that a line drawn diagonally from one corner of the rectangle to the one opposite will meet with the longer side at an angle of approximately 31.6, this a quick way to draw golden rectangles is to set a protractor to 31.6 and, well, figure it out!