How do you insert an equilateral triangle?

The only way to accurately create an equilateral triangle is to make a hexagon and delete every second apex.

Due to the limitations of Pages' drawing tools I have created a very large drawing sheet (3600 points square) to make my own basic shapes that I then copy elsewhere.

Peter

I do it my way because the base dimension is the width/sidelength and I do not want the number of sides to be accidentally editable.

But whatever works for you. 🙂

Peter

You can create a pure vector equilateral triangle on a transparent background purely with shapes, the pen tool, and optionally, guides.

Steps:

1. Pages Preferences : Rulers. Click both Alignment Guides boxes. You will see why later.
2. From the Shape tool in the Pages v5.6.1 toolbar, select the last dot on the right (shapes on transparent backgrounds that look white), and pick the circle shape.
   1. While still selected, click the Arrange tab, and set Text wrap to None, and then from the size section, directly enter 2.0 in for width and height values, then click Constrain proportions.
   2. Drag/Center the circle in your document. Alignment guides will automatically appear as cross vertical and horizontal center.
3. Duplicate your circle by pressing the option key while dragging it straight downward until its upper arc intersects the center-point of the original circle. This circle will have inherited its settings from the original circle, so no need to visit the Arrange tab.

   I have added both horizontal and vertical guides for additional visual alignment.
   

4. From the Shape Toolbar item, select the Draw with Pen item. Carefully, and continuously, click on the left intersection point of the two circles, and then draw across to its right counterpart, and then draw up to the top guide/circle intersection point, and then finish by drawing back to the starting box, and clicking once to complete the equilateral triangle. From start to finish, you never release the mouse button. This is one contiguous line drawing.
5. You can now select the triangle, and from the Style tab, set borders to None, and Fill to your desired color. Your triangle is enclosed in a transparent bounding box.
   1. You may wish to keep this for future use. Press command+A to select all objects, Group, and then save
   2. View menu : Guides : Clear All Guides on Page
6. Save the equilateral triangle as an image for reuse.
   1. Select the triangle.
   2. Copy
   3. Launchpad : Preview
      1. File menu : New from Clipboard.
      2. The triangle will appear on a transparent background.
      3. Export... Option key + Format: (pick your image save format).
         

For anyone who needs the steps for my method:

1. Click on the Shape tool on the Tool bar and chose the Pentagon (multiple side shape)

2. Pull round the green dot to increase the sides to 6

3. Menu > Format > Shapes and Lines > Make Shape Editable (option command shift e)

4. click on every 2nd point and hit Delete

5. Toolbar > Format > Arrange > Size > Width to set the length of each side

Dead accurate, appeals to my Teutonic sense of precision.

Peter

The things I go through to extract that Teutonic wisdom from you... 😉

Ja voll! 😀

Peter

Actually, there is an even easier way to do this (which you are doing in a roundabout way). When you click the green dot, you rotate clockwise to expand the number of sides to 6, as per your instructions. However, if you rotate counterclockwise, you can reduce the number of sides to 3, resulting in the same equilateral triangle. I believe when you delete your 3 points, you are doing the same thing, just with more steps. Also, they may have fixed this in more recent updates 🙂

Hi dswihart.

However, if you rotate counterclockwise, you can reduce the number of sides to 3, resulting in the same equilateral triangle.

Thanks for that tip.

I inserted a Pentagon shape, and rotated it counterclockwise by the green dot to three sides.

To confirm that it is equilateral, I inserted Line shapes and rotated them in Format Panel > Arrange > Rotate (Text boxes added to show the rotation angle).

Tested in Pages 5.6.1

Regards,

Ian.

There is a reason I do things the way I do.

Using your method Pages retains the bounding box of the original shape, basically the circumferancing circle it is calculated from, and you can not accurately size the equilateral triangle.

It is important to have the sides be what you specify them.

Editing the shape forces Pages to recalculate the bounding box and you can then use the shape accurately in whatever other construction you want.

This works equally as well in Pages '09, but generally the boolean operations in Pages 5.6.1 make it the better drawing tool.

Just avoid complexity or large numbers of objects in Pages 5, it rapidly grinds to a creeping stutter or goes into the eternal spinning beachball, even on a very powerful MacPro. Just badly written.

Peter

We went through all that above with Eric.

Peter