Pentagon flower

[Sem]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to Inkscape and I'm trying to do my logo with it.
I've already done it with GIMP, but the issue is that with GIMP things get blurry and not as sharp as with vectors.
Well my logo is kinda a flower made out of circles around an equilateral pentagon.
It looks pretty much like this:

https://www2.pic-upload.de/img/33171759/Blume.png

thats how I did the 'construction':

https://img3.picload.org/image/rciircll/blumegeruest.png

My problem the whole time is that after I made a pentagon with the polygontool the circles dont make up like they do with GIMP, it never matches. I dont even get a circle that fits perfectly inside the pentagon where all the edges touch the circle. There has to be a way to do this with Inkscape. The best thing would be if I can build my 'construction' again so I can alter it like i please.

So how I've done it with GIMP was:

1. I build a equilateral pentagon
2. Then I placed a circle perfectly inside it
3. After that I placed the other circles so around that they touch 2 corners while skipping 1.

Please help me, I'm a bit desperate and thanks in advance


Sem

[brynn]

Welcome Sem!

The good news is that Inkscape can make the construction process faster and easier, as you've found out with the Star/Polygon tool!

To make a perfect circle you need to hold the Ctrl key while you drag out the Ellipse.  If you use Snapping, you can start drawing the circle at precisely the center of the pentagon.  Snapping is a fairly sophisticated feature which takes a little practice and study to really understand enough to use effectively.  So I'll just tell you how to set it up for this project.

Click the first button, Enable Snapping
 - Snap nodes, paths, handles
 - Snap to paths
 - Snap cusp nodes
 - Snap smooth nodes
 - Snap other points
 - Snap rotation centers

Now with that set up, with the Ellipse tool enabled, when your mouse is near the center of the pentagon, you'll see a little X flash off and on, and some lilttle text which says "Handle to object rotation center".   It might be partially transparent.  So that means, when you're close to that place, when you start drawing, it will start precisely at that rotation center (even if your mouse is not precisely on the point).

Then you'll need to hold Shift and Ctrl while you drag to create the circle.  Shift makes it draw from the center (otherwise it would draw from whatever point where you first clicked).  (And as I said before, Ctrl make it a perfect circle.  Then when the mouse is getting close the pentagon, it will start trying to snap to something else.  You may see a few different options.  If you want an option it's not offering, let us know what it is, and we can tell you how to set it up.

And you can draw all the other circles in the same way.

I see some other paths in you example, but since you didn't ask, I guess you've already figured out how to draw those?

However, having said all that, I can tell you the the Spirogram extension can make that object in one go....although unfortunately, unless you understand the math, it's all trial and error to find the correct simulation.  Luckily, I've made tons of spirograms, and can paste one in pretty quickly for you.  I just need to find it in my files. 

Although having said all that, the spirogram won't be as precise as your carefully constructed flower object.  So maybe just as well to build it.  But let me know, and I'll find it.

Let us know if you need any other info