Shading Intersections of Two Circles

[Leonard M. Wapner]

Greetings:

I have two AutoShape circles of the same size, slightly overlaping - no
fill. (Venn diagram.) I would like to shade their intersection (common
area) gray. Is there a way to do this in Word without converting to Paint?
I do not wish to shade all of either or both circles, just the middle
intersection (overlap).

Thanks -

Len

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Leonard,

If you're using Word 2002 or 2003 you can
use Insert=>Diagram to create Venn diagrams.

With Autoshapes you may need to draw the shape
of the overlap or use another circle in the shape
of an oval to apply over the intersection area.

========
Greetings:

I have two AutoShape circles of the same size, slightly overlaping - no
fill. (Venn diagram.) I would like to shade their intersection (common
area) gray. Is there a way to do this in Word without converting to Paint?
I do not wish to shade all of either or both circles, just the middle
intersection (overlap).

Thanks -

Len >>
--
I hope this helps you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

The Office 2003 System parts explained
http://microsoft.com/uk/office/preview/system.asp

 

[Mark Tangard]

Hi Len,

You can't do this automatically. I just tried it, expecting failure,
but found it actually is *possible*, but it might be too frustrating
if you need to do a lot of them with different sizes and arrangements
of the circies.

Basically you create an "arc" autoshape to match one QUARTER of the
football-like shape of the circles' intersection. Then copy it,
flip one of them horizontally, and nudge them together so that they
create the shape of the intersection.

Making the arc is the hardest part, because there isn't a way to
generate it *from* the circle, and the arc tool is a tad ornery,
always wants to create a .

(If the circles aren't sitting on the
same baseline, you could do the same thing and then rotate them -- or
"it"; see below.)

Then GROUP them -- that's the key, because that then enables you to
treat it as one shape and lets you apply a fill. Do that, and then
remove its line (border), then nudge it into position between the
circles. Then twiddle [endlessly...] with 'Send to Back' and 'Send
to Front' to get the football to not obscure the borders of the
circles. (I found send behind or bring in front of TEXT -- even
though none of this is text -- was the only thing that worked.)

I initially thought this could be done with 2 arcs, one for each
half of the intersection shape. It indeed might be doable that
way, but I couldn't make the arc "calm enough" to be the necessary
shape. It also helps if the borders of the circles are thick, to
camouflage any mismatch in the shape of the football and the actual
circles.

If you'd like to see how I did it I can email you the file; just
yell.

 

[Mark Tangard]

Sigh. I'm having a serious keyboard-stick problem tonight -- this
message (like 2 others) got SENT before I'd finished.

Addenda/Errata to what I wrote below:

You *can* generate a circle-based arc (by holding down SHIFT while
dragging) but this doesn't help. In fact, those seem to fail when
grouped for filling. Also, using 2 arcs, which would seem most
logical, refuses to accept the proper fill.

Inside the paragraph where the two arcs are nudged together should
be another instruction to create a mirrored pair of the first, two,
THEN nudge all 4 together to create the intersection shape.

It helps -- though not as much as one might expect -- to give the
arcs thick borders so that their joining creates a fillable shape.
If the joining is even slightly off, the fill fails (creates a
diamond instead of a football).

MT

Hi Len,

You can't do this automatically. I just tried it, expecting failure,
but found it actually is *possible*, but it might be too frustrating
if you need to do a lot of them with different sizes and arrangements
of the circles.

Basically you create an "arc" autoshape to match one QUARTER of the
football-like shape of the circles' intersection. Then copy it,
flip one of them horizontally, and nudge them together so that they
create the shape of the intersection.

Making the arc is the hardest part, because there isn't a way to
generate it *from* the circle, and the arc tool is a tad ornery,
always wants to create a .

(If the circles aren't sitting on the
same baseline, you could do the same thing and then rotate them -- or
"it"; see below.)

Then GROUP them -- that's the key, because that then enables you to
treat it as one shape and lets you apply a fill. Do that, and then
remove its line (border), then nudge it into position between the
circles. Then twiddle [endlessly...] with 'Send to Back' and 'Send
to Front' to get the football to not obscure the borders of the
circles. (I found send behind or bring in front of TEXT -- even
though none of this is text -- was the only thing that worked.)

I initially thought this could be done with 2 arcs, one for each
half of the intersection shape. It indeed might be doable that
way, but I couldn't make the arc "calm enough" to be the necessary
shape. It also helps if the borders of the circles are thick, to
camouflage any mismatch in the shape of the football and the actual
circles.

If you'd like to see how I did it I can email you the file; just
yell.

--
Mark Tangard <[email protected]>, Microsoft Word MVP
Please reply only to the newsgroup, not by private email.
Note well: MVPs do not work for Microsoft.
"Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." --John Waters

Greetings:

I have two AutoShape circles of the same size, slightly overlaping - no
fill. (Venn diagram.) I would like to shade their intersection (common
area) gray. Is there a way to do this in Word without converting to Paint?
I do not wish to shade all of either or both circles, just the middle
intersection (overlap).

Thanks -

Len

 

[Mark Tangard]

Further correction:

It isn't the grouping at all that makes the football shape fillable.
Filling an arc fills the "pie-piece" on its concave side, so if you
make 4 such pie pieces and fill them, you can get the intersection
shape. Grouping just helps you move them all at once. This is
still necessarily flawed, because geometrically you can't create
the exact football shape with 4 quarter arcs of an ellipse. But
you can come close.

I'm sure this is child's play in a decent graphics program like
Photoshop or Fireworks.

--
Mark Tangard <[email protected]>, Microsoft Word MVP
Please reply only to the newsgroup, not by private email.
Note well: MVPs do not work for Microsoft.
"Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." --John Waters

Sigh. I'm having a serious keyboard-stick problem tonight -- this
message (like 2 others) got SENT before I'd finished.

Addenda/Errata to what I wrote below:

You *can* generate a circle-based arc (by holding down SHIFT while
dragging) but this doesn't help. In fact, those seem to fail when
grouped for filling. Also, using 2 arcs, which would seem most
logical, refuses to accept the proper fill.

Inside the paragraph where the two arcs are nudged together should
be another instruction to create a mirrored pair of the first, two,
THEN nudge all 4 together to create the intersection shape.

It helps -- though not as much as one might expect -- to give the
arcs thick borders so that their joining creates a fillable shape.
If the joining is even slightly off, the fill fails (creates a
diamond instead of a football).

MT

Hi Len,

You can't do this automatically. I just tried it, expecting failure,
but found it actually is *possible*, but it might be too frustrating
if you need to do a lot of them with different sizes and arrangements
of the circles.

Basically you create an "arc" autoshape to match one QUARTER of the
football-like shape of the circles' intersection. Then copy it,
flip one of them horizontally, and nudge them together so that they
create the shape of the intersection.

Making the arc is the hardest part, because there isn't a way to
generate it *from* the circle, and the arc tool is a tad ornery,
always wants to create a .

(If the circles aren't sitting on the
same baseline, you could do the same thing and then rotate them -- or
"it"; see below.)

Then GROUP them -- that's the key, because that then enables you to
treat it as one shape and lets you apply a fill. Do that, and then
remove its line (border), then nudge it into position between the
circles. Then twiddle [endlessly...] with 'Send to Back' and 'Send
to Front' to get the football to not obscure the borders of the
circles. (I found send behind or bring in front of TEXT -- even
though none of this is text -- was the only thing that worked.)

I initially thought this could be done with 2 arcs, one for each
half of the intersection shape. It indeed might be doable that
way, but I couldn't make the arc "calm enough" to be the necessary
shape. It also helps if the borders of the circles are thick, to
camouflage any mismatch in the shape of the football and the actual
circles.

If you'd like to see how I did it I can email you the file; just
yell.

--
Mark Tangard <[email protected]>, Microsoft Word MVP
Please reply only to the newsgroup, not by private email.
Note well: MVPs do not work for Microsoft.
"Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." --John Waters

Greetings:

I have two AutoShape circles of the same size, slightly overlaping - no
fill. (Venn diagram.) I would like to shade their intersection (common
area) gray. Is there a way to do this in Word without converting to Paint?
I do not wish to shade all of either or both circles, just the middle
intersection (overlap).

Thanks -

Len