Illustrator Tutorial: Halloween Spiders and Webs, Part 1: Spinning the Web

With the small circle still selected, select the Rotate tool in the toolbox, and hover the mouse over the exact center of the large circle where the two guidelines cross, hold the opt/alt key, and click. This sets the point of origin of the rotation at the exact center of the large circle and opens the rotate dialog at the same time. Enter 360/10 in the Angle box. We want 10 small circles spaced evenly around the large circle, and Illustrator will do the math and figure the angle by dividing the number of circles into the number of degrees in a circle (which happens to be 36º, but this was an easy one. They aren't always so simple). Click the Copy button. You should have two circles. Before you do anything else, type cmd/ctrl + D eight times to duplicate the circles and space them around the large circle's perimeter. You should have something like this now, and in case you are wondering, it's OK if the circles overlap, in fact, they should.