Because there are limited native tools for drawing curves, I’ve done my best to really understand how the arc tool works. At least in my experience, I’ve found it needs “help” to make curves tangent to lines. By that I mean I need to guide the arc tool along the lines, and in some cases use “helper triangles” to get the tangents I want.
Here’s an example involving the wires found within electrical cables. The end result is like this
And the process to make the twisted wires is like this:
The key in each case is how to make “s-shaped” curves which are tangent to the desired lines. Here is step-by-step explanation of the above screen recording:
To make each of the twisted cylinders, draw…
-
a line between each end circle
-
a short perpendicular line from each circle
-
a line connecting each perpendicular
-
remove line (1)
-
a helper triangle with sides perpendicular and parallel to the end circles
-
an arc from the triangle corner to the middle of line (3)
-
an arc from the middle of line (3) to the other triangular corner
-
remove unneeded and use follow me tool