Newbie trying to

Question

I am trying to teach myself how to use Illustrator and I feel like I am making some progress.  But, there is one thing that I can't seem to fgure how to do in a efficient manner.  I draw a lot of cars (mostly on paper, but now via Illustrator)  I am trying to create the wheels of the car, but can't seem to find a good way to do it.  Basically what I would like to be able to do is create a "spoke" of the wheel and then duplicate that "spoke" in a radial pattern around a center point.  Here is what I have done so far:
Create a triangle
Copy/paste the triangle 4 times, rotating each one 72 degrees (360 degrees divided by 5 spokes)
Snap 5 triangles together joining all of the end points
Group 5 triangles together
Draw circle over the five triangles
Align the center of the circle with the center of the grouped triangles
I then trim the edges of the triangles leaving me with 5 spokes with rounded edges
The problem with this method is that for some reason, the center of the spokes do not align correctly with the center point of the circle (despite using the align tool)  It is always just a little bit off.  It's not really noticeable unless zoomed in, but I know it's not right.  Also, as I get better I want to be able to create different styles of wheels with more spokes, which will make the problem more noticable.
Anyone have any ideas or advice.  I have searched online, but can't find any answers.

Answer 1

There are some things, that may assist you.
- smart guides: show the centres of geometric objects and make them magnetic
- pressing the Alt-Key when working with the rotate tool. You press alt and click the center of rotation, after that a dialog will aks you for th angle. That way you can rotate an objct around any point you like.
- live paint: assists in the creation of complex shapes out of primitive ones. After using the live-paint-bucket, expand the object
Like this:
http://www.vektorgarten.de/img/tut/cragar-wheel.mov