Regular polygons in generativepy
Martin McBride, 2022-06-05
Tags generativepy tutorial fill stroke polygon regular polygon
Categories generativepy generativepy tutorial

This tutorial shows how to create regular polygons in generativepy, using the RegularPolygon class.
Here are some related tutorials that contain useful information about other features this tutorial uses:
- Fill and stroke tutorial - how we fill and outline shapes.
- Circle tutorial - how to make circles (we use circles to illustrate inner and outer radius in this tutorial).
- Polygons tutorial - how to make some other types of polygons.
RegularPolygon example code
Here is the code to show some of the features of RegularPolygon
:
from generativepy.drawing import make_image, setup from generativepy.color import Color from generativepy.geometry import RegularPolygon, Circle import math def draw(ctx, pixel_width, pixel_height, frame_no, frame_count): setup(ctx, pixel_width, pixel_height, background=Color(0.8)) red = Color('crimson') green = Color('darkgreen') blue = Color('dodgerblue') RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((150, 150), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((400, 150), 6, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((650, 150), 6, 100, math.pi/12)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((150, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) Circle(ctx).of_center_radius((150, 400), p.inner_radius).stroke(red, 5) p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((400, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) Circle(ctx).of_center_radius((400, 400), p.outer_radius).stroke(red, 5) p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((650, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) for v in p.vertices: Circle(ctx).of_center_radius(v, 10).fill(red) make_image("regularpolygons-tutorial.png", draw, 800, 550)
This code is available on github in tutorial/shapes/regularpolygons.py.
Here is the resulting image:
We will examine this code in the sections below.
Drawing basic regular polygons
This section of the code draws the two polygons in the top left of the image:
RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((150, 150), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((400, 150), 6, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5)
This code creates two polygons with:
- A suitable centre point to position them on the page.
- 5 sides (pentagon) and 6 sides (hexagon).
- Radius of 100 to set the size.
- Filled in blue and outlined in green.
Notice that both shapes have horizontal bases.
Drawing a rotated polygon
This code draws the hexagon in the top left of the image:
RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((650, 150), 6, 100, math.pi/12)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5)
This is drawn in the same way as the previous hexagon, but with an angle of math.pi/12
radians (15 degrees). This rotates the shape 15 degrees clockwise about its centre, so the base is no longer horizontal.
Drawing an inner circle
This code draws the same pentagon as before, but with an inner circle (bottom left of the main image):
p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((150, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) Circle(ctx).of_center_radius((150, 400), p.inner_radius).stroke(red, 5)
When we draw the pentagon, we also store the RegularPolygon
object as p
.
We then draw a circle. The circle has the same centre as the polygon, and a radius equal to the inner radius of the polygon. This is obtained from p.inner_radius
.
The circle just fits inside the polygon.
Drawing an outer circle
This code draws the same pentagon as before, but with an outer circle (bottom centre of the main image):
p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((400, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) Circle(ctx).of_center_radius((400, 400), p.outer_radius).stroke(red, 5)
This time, the circle has the same centre as the polygon, and a radius equal to the outer radius of the polygon. This is obtained from p.outer_radius
.
The polygon just fits inside the circle.
Drawing the vertices
This code draws the same pentagon as before, but marks each corner with a dot (bottom right of the main image):
p = RegularPolygon(ctx).of_centre_sides_radius((650, 400), 5, 100)\ .fill(blue)\ .stroke(green, 5) for v in p.vertices: Circle(ctx).of_center_radius(v, 10).fill(red)
We draw the polygon as usual.
Then we use p.vertices
to get the corners of the polygon. This returns a tuple of five coordinates (x, y)
corresponding to the five vertices of the pentagon.
We loop over those vertices, and for each one we draw a small red-filled circle, radius 10, centred on the vertex. This draws a red dot at each corner of the pentagon.