How to Rotate Object Around Circle in Illustrator

For instance, if you have a circle and you want to place stars around the circle. The stars are not lined up correctly when you’re doing it by hand. Although the circle does not circle perfectly around the center, it still yields a result. Therefore, I’m going to show you how you can do that.

We’re going to start a new document here. To create a circle, I’m going to use the ellipse tool. As you hold down shift, we’ll get the perfect circle, so go for it.

We are going to use the star tool under the ellipse tool.

Now we will just drag this out.

Take the rotation tool from the right toolbar. While holding down the alt key, we will click in the center of the circle.

A pop-up window will appear.

Since you know that a circle is 360 degrees, we are going to type 360. Once that’s typed, add a forward slash to it, followed by the number of objects you want going around it. So type in 15 if you want 15 stars around it.

if you’d like to look at it before you release it, hit preview. you’ll see exactly how it angles the star. Once that is done, hit the copy button.

Keep in mind: don’t click OK.

We noticed it also made a copy over here.

Make another copy of the document by hitting Control D.

Just hold down Control D and it will automatically copy for you instead of hitting Ctrl D a bunch of times.

In case you have any suggestions for future tutorials, just let me know in the comments! Hope you are well, and I hope you have a great weekend.