Monday, May 16, 2016

How to make isometric drawings in AutoCAD

I wanted to show an isometric drawing of my assembly, but of course I wasn't actually using AutoCAD. It seems from the following link that it might be pretty easy to do it in AutoCAD:

https://autocadtips1.com/2012/07/27/intro-to-isometric-drawing/

It turns out to be super easy to gen up an Isometric view from a 2D 3-view drawing! I found one video that explains everything very well, and then I began to realize that a few of the other links on the subject that I found were saying the same thing.

In short, the procedure is: Take your top view, rotate it by +45 degrees, then scale the Y axis by 0.57735. Take your front view, also rotate it by +45 degrees and scale its X axis by 0.57735, then rotate it by -30 degrees. Take your side view, rotate it by -45 degrees, scale its X axis by 0.57735 and then rotate it by +30 degrees.

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs71w6UhXiM

Here's a super awesome page that shows exactly the same thing but with words and pictures:

http://www.intellicad.org/articles-and-press-releases/bid/205888/2-D-construction-technique-to-create-an-isometric-view

Here's a completely different way to do isometrics in AutoCAD using the SOLPROF, SOLVIEW, and SOLDRAW commands, which of course are not part of the free knock-off DoubleCAD that I am using:

http://www.maelabs.ucsd.edu/mae_guides/autocad/3d_to_2d.htm