You can buy a plastic wheel lug bolt hole pattern for cheap I know, but I had time on my hands and wanted experience with circular arrays. So I made one. Took a bit to get the tricks, but I think I did well.
THE ATTACHED FILE HAS NOT BEEN FIRST-RUN TESTED! But it looks good on sumulation. I plan to run it when I get off vacation and back to the shop, so improvement suggestions are welcome.
The stock is just a 7" x 7" (or larger) piece of 1/4" (5mm) plywood, or equivalent.
Enjoy!
BTW - first post on the community site, so be kind.
edit - I made some improvements and downloaded a new version.
Wheel lug 5-bolt pattern with guides.c2d (464 KB)
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Nice! Handy tool for someone who works with wheels & hubs.
I started measuring from the center of the job to the center of the bolt holes to see how accurate they were, and they were all off a little. They all look correct with respect to each other, they just aren’t centered on the job. Curious how you did the design.
You can probably get away with shorter tabs as well. (0.050")
Good first project, and something useful 
I designed the template by making 4 circles at 4.5, 4.75, 5 & 5.5” diameter. Then I placed a 9/16” diameter circle at the top of each circle. Then I selected the innermost small circle and did a 5-element circular array. Then I selected the next circle, did the array, grouped the five small circles and their large circle and rotated the group 18 degrees. Repeat, repeat, repeat adding 18 degrees each time.
The reason the lug circles are not centered on the final job is when I created the 6.5” contour circle (centered on the job) the group of small circles did not appear centered even though their boundary square was centered. So I grouped everything except the contour circle and moved the group to be visually centered.
Hope that helps.
In retrospect I coulda-shoulda left the concentric circles in the design, just not selected in the tool paths.
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That explains it. Bi-lateral symmetry of a 5 sided pattern or polygon doesn’t look right.
But the radial symmetry with respect to the circular outline does.
Not a big deal, as long as the bolt patterns are spaced correctly and the product works.
I was more curious as there are many ways to approach a design (skin a cat) and none of them are really wrong if the final outcome is what you wanted.
People here on this forum do usually give snarky answers. Plus the forum is moderated and people that get out of control are edited. So feel free to ask questions and get answers.
This forum has always been civil and helpful to me and others. This is not like the majority of social media with people purposely trying to get a reaction from you. You know like white is black or red is blue just to get you to click and dispute and cause distension.
Answers are a dollar,
Correct Answers are two dollars.
Dumb looks are still free.
I made some revisions - corrected the symmetry issue and restored the guide lines.
Posted a new c2d file in the top post, and below.
Thanks for the feedback!
Wheel lug 5-bolt pattern with guides.c2d (464 KB)
1 Like