Borromean rings

This document shows how to make the Borromean rings using TikZ. It's not very complicated, but it shows you how much a TikZ picture is really just like some source code.

Edit and compile if you like:

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% Title: Borromean_rings
% Author: Dan Drake 
% This document shows how to make the Borromean rings using TikZ. It's
% not very complicated, but it shows you how much a TikZ picture is
% really just like some source code.
%
% This document may be distributed and modified under the terms of the
% Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. See
% http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
%
% This document is available from
% http://www.scribd.com/doc/3292620/Borromean-rings. The
% LaTeX{} source code is available from http://math.kaist.ac.kr/~drake.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
% drawing parameters
\newcommand{\circdist}{1}  % distance from origin to center of circles
\newcommand{\circrad}{7/4} % radius of the circles
\newcommand{\circlethickness}{6mm} % uh, thickness of the circles
% distance from the origin to the three "interior" intersections
\pgfmathsetmacro{\intrad}{sqrt((\circrad)^2 - 3*(\circdist)^2/4) - \circdist/2}
% distance from the origin to the three "exterior" intersections
\pgfmathsetmacro{\extrad}{sqrt((\circrad)^2 - 3*(\circdist)^2/4) + \circdist/2}
% so we can just specify an angle and get the correct color for the circle
\colorlet{180}{blue}
\colorlet{60}{red}
\colorlet{300}{green}
% draws one of our circles
\newcommand{\mycircle}[1]{%
  \draw[thick, double distance=\circlethickness, double=#1]
  (#1:\circdist) circle (\circrad);}
\begin{document}
 
 
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