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3D Pie Graphs in Illustrator
By Cari Jansen | April 20, 2008
Digitip 073 - Adobe Illustrator CS3
Illustrator has had a graph tool for as long as I can remember. The following trick shows how you can use Illustrator graphs to create a 3D pie graph for which the graph data can still be edited.
Let’s get started by entering some basic numbers 
Create Graph
Start by selecting the Pie Graph Tool from Tool panel.
Click and drag the area you’d like the graph to cover, when you release the mouse button, the graph data window appears. Alternatively click in the artboard to set width/height for the Graph in the Graph dialog.
Enter the graph data or copy and paste data from an Excel worksheet into the graph data window. Click the Apply button in the top right corner of the graph data window to view the ‘flat’ pie graph. And close the graph data window when the data entered is OK.
Set Graph Colours
Graphs are groups. It is important to remember that when you’re working with Graphs in Illustrator and wish to edit colours or other parts of the graph, you do not ungroup the Graph at any stage, especially if you still want to edit the graph data at a later stage.
As far as I can tell the Isolate Group functionality from Illustrator CS2 and CS3 does not work on graphs. I guess that makes sense in a way, as it would allow you to add non-graph objects to the graph.
So how do we select parts of the graph if we want to change say colour? Well this is where the good old Group Selection Tool comes in handy It’s hidden behind the Direct Selection tool (or if you have the Direct Selection tool selected will be accessible when you press the Alt/Option key in combination with this tool).
Using the Group Selection Tool select the different pieces of the pie (don’t eat them!) and change their colours.
Putting some depth in the pie
Time to put some depth in the pie graph Select the graph with the Selection Tool.
Select Effect > 3D > Extrude and Bevel.
Tick the Preview option in the dialog to preview the 3D effect you are creating. As I’d like to get the yellow part to be positioned to the front of the graph I’m dragging the various edges of the X, Y and Z axis to specify the correct rotation angles.
To change the depth of the pie graph, reduce the Extrude Depth setting. The slider is a bit sensitive, so I generally enter the value manually.
Click the More Options… button in the dialog to edit shading effects. I’m adding an extra highlight and have changed the intensity a bit to generate a different lighting effect.
For commercial printing I’d advice increasing the Blend Steps, as this will create smoother blending of the shading effects. In the past RIPs might have had issues processing a high amount of blend shades but now-a-days I doubt that would be much of an issue.
Once you’re happy with the 3D view of your graph click OK.
Moving a piece of the pie
Once you’re viewing the 3D chart it appears to be difficult to select that piece of pie you’d like to ‘eat’ Changing the View mode to Outline mode will help, but you can’t preview at the same time. A little trick you can apply is to create a New Window for your document (Window > New Window). This allows you to set one window in Preview mode and the other in Outline.
If you’re working on a Mac you won’t have an option available that allows you to tile the two windows. So you’ll have to resize your windows and move them around to display them side by side.
It’s time to select the Group Selection Tool again and start moving that piece of pie. I’ve noticed on my mac that the preview doesn’t quite update but an incremental zoom-in/out on the preview window will refresh the preview without any problems.
When you’ve achieved the required result you can close the second window you opened and set to Outline mode.
Editing the graph data
As I mentioned earlier, you will be able to edit the graph data as long as you haven’t ungrouped your graph at any stage.
Select your graph with the Selection Tool and choose Object > Graph > Data. The data window will reappear. Make the desired changes and apply the new data settings to the graph, then close the data window.
Editing the 3D effect
If you’re not happy yet with the actual 3D effect, you can continue to make changes to the various 3D Extrude & Bevel settings you’ve applied.
Select the graph with the Selection tool and display the Appearance panel.
Locate the 3D Extrude & Bevel Effect that’s been applied and double click this to return to the 3D Extrude & Bevel Options dialog.
Although this tip is kind-a cool, I have to admit the whole editability (not sure if that’s actually a word…) doesn’t quite work as nicely when your graph contains labels.
If you happen to have found a work-around to this that works, let me know and I’ll happily add a note to this tip to include the extra information.
Topics: digitip, illustrator |
April 30th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
thank good for Cari - its been driving me crazy trying to change the colour of the wedges!!!!
May 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
May 9th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Thank you, It was very helpful. How to Change the colours was giving me a hard time!!!
May 9th, 2008 at 11:46 am
You’re most welcome Plaguna
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:37 am
Is there a way to have illustrator show the data numbers when it creates a graph like the show data numbers in the Freehand graphic tool?
July 6th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Nope, not that I am aware of.
The graph feature in Illustrator has been in ’static’ mode for quite a few versions now. Definitely a good one to add to the feature requests for improvement of the graph functionality in Illustrator
submit feature request