making a perfect 3d box

[ggfolio.com]

Hi all

im making an isometric map in illustrator i've done this a few times before but i was wondering, if anyone has any ideas how to make an isometric cube with all the points joint together? it hard to explain but i usually draw a square on a 45 degree angle duplicate it, pull the duplicated one down (depending on how high i want the building) and then join the corners with straght vertical lines.
this looks ok at a distance but close up the corners dont meet and it requires a lot of mucking about to get it right

i have also tried using the 3d effect and then expanding the apperance but you end up with lots of paths you dont need and it still sdosent work that well

any ideas ?

if you look at my site: http://www.ggfolio.com/My_Work.swf and go to the willesden green re-design you'll see what i mean

[The Repro Kid]

Howdy ggfolio, there is a concrete formula involving Skew, Scale and Rotate, that will yield you an Iso object. If you have access to Adobe Illustrator documentation, say from version 6 and down, then you hill have this info in their excellent documentation. If you have later versions, the documentation is weak, but you might be able to find the info on their web site.

Also, CadTools, a plug in for Illustrator can draw Iso shapes.

But after looking at the buildings, I would be tempted to do the drawing on an Isometric grid. The shapes are too involved for the pure mechanical method. The CadTools plug-in might do it, I've only played with it and never tried to do an involved drawing with it, and it costs money.

However, a grid is free, and it looks fairly easy to draw on a grid.

I think the new illustrator has a set of grids in the templates, or in the extras folder on the disk. (or maybe you can load different grid views in the bkgd?)

[scottie]

I've emailed you a 3D cube drawing named cube.pdf. To start place this drawing or open it in AI. Now drag and drop it into your symbols menu. Now, whenever you need a cube to modify into a building or whatever just drag the cube symbol onto your drawing. Select the cube symbol and pick expand fill and stroke, OK. Now, using your direct select tool select...say the top plan, hold down the shift key and drag vertically to the hight you desire. To make the cube into a long rectangle just select the right side plan and drag to the right as desired holding the shift key. Select, copy and past as needed. Scale as needed. From viewing your 3D maps it seems to me that you could lift many of your shapes and drop them onto your symbols menu and use them as building blocks, that way they would be available whenever you need them. Nice work by the way. Oh, bye the bye, the cube I sent you only has five sides, top, left side, right side, and front; no bottom. As drawn all the corners touch, meet, join, etc. I didn't use any particular fullness to draw the cubes base. The methode I use is to drag a rectangle holding down the option and shift keys and then using the open select tool selecting the top plan and drag it down and to the right (in this case, could be to the left, to the fullness desired. Play with it and you'll see what I mean. Have fun, play is fun, playing with a friend is fun but watch out if you're playing with yourself.
BTW, open your illustrator_start_up.eps drawing and place your building block in its symbol library and save. Now your shapes will be available no matter what you're working on.

[The Repro Kid]

Here is my summarized version of Adobe's Isometric Tutorial found in their older Illustrator manuals.

Now here are my thoughts on Adobe's Method -- I think the initial amorphic scaling on the top panel results in a drawing that is more like an Isometric Projection rather than an Isometric Drawing. A true projection involves some foreshortening, which results in a more realistic looking drawing. Most engineering Isometric drawings are not projections and do not have foreshortening, so they are quicker to make and have a more intense oblique look. Isometric Projection is used more for a rendering than a working drawing. Dimetric and Trimetric are always true projections, because you have to do the foreshortening for the unequal axis to line up.

I don't think Adobe's Method really draws either a true Iso Drawing or a true Iso Projection, but I think it most closely approximates an Iso Projection.

[scottie]

I created a 1 unit cube. Using copy and paste the cube was copied and transformed to the base using the direct select tool. This resultant base was copied verticaly 1 unit to form the Top. Cube A was then copied to attach to the right side of base and top then transformed to snap to the back of the base and top. The right side was then copied and moved to snap to the left side of the base. Cube A was then copied and attached to create the front surface. Then copied and pasted again to create the back face. All sides are then moved using Apple-[ (move to back) or Apple-] (move to front) so as to correctly order the sides if filled. So from one Shape the illusion of a 3D cube was created. Notice that the cube shape, filled and unfilled was then placed in to the Symbols library for future use. The cube can be made long or tall by using the direct select tool and draging to a desired width or hight. The orthographic projection is up to you, just transform-drag to the fullness you like. No scaling/rotating required. Time to construct the 2 1/2 D Cube the first time, less than a minut. No construction time from then on once it's droped into the sysmbols lib.

[The Repro Kid]

That's cool but ggfolio still needs an Iso cube not an Oblique cube. But I still would shy away from construction of a complex drawing by using a series of little cubes.

I would still tend to want to draw it with a grid. Its just so much faster and also easier to make angled surfaces and elliptical surfaces and complex shapes.

But I come from a Technical Illustration background, where Iso drawing is king, and I still tend to fall back on that training, even though it was so long ago.

To create my grid, I used Adobe's method to draw an Iso Cube, did a bit of blending to make the grid lines and there it is. The grid itself takes some work to prepare, but the drawing goes like cake and once you make a grid, you never have to remake it again.

But I could have sworn Illustrator has some perspective and Iso grids now that can be viewed in the program, but I searched the help menu and couldn't find anything so I must be thinking of another program.

[scottie]

I too started out life as a tech illustrator, mainly in the aircraft industry. We didn't use iso projections because they take up too much space. 20º - 50º fullness, 13º R/L base line was the norm. We didn't use a grid. Of course I wasn't using AI then either. I used a program called Autotrol-TI. It was a true 3D product designed for Technical Illustration. It has many nice feature but text was painfull. AI's text features are superior. Just wondering; did you draw the rectangle shape one grid unit away from the verticle back grid for a purpose?

[scottie]

An Iso hardware sample

[scottie]

at various rotations and fullness...

[scottie]

various rotations and fullness, building blocks all.

[The Repro Kid]

I too started out life as a tech illustrator, mainly in the aircraft industry. We didn't use iso projections because they take up too much space. 20º - 50º fullness, 13º R/L base line was the norm. We didn't use a grid. Of course I wasn't using AI then either. I used a program called Autotrol-TI. It was a true 3D product designed for Technical Illustration. It has many nice feature but text was painfull. AI's text features are superior. Just wondering; did you draw the rectangle shape one grid unit away from the verticle back grid for a purpose?
You were drawing in a Trimetric Axis, at least, I think 20-50 is trimetric, it may be dimetric, I don't have that stuff memorized anymore and I don't feel like looking it up. My Tech Ill days were without the benifits of computers, we used pencils, drafting machines, elipse templates, triangles, mylar, rapidographs, etc. For dimetric and trimetric measurements we used special foreshortened rulers (scales) that we plotted ourselves and shot onto film positive. Being without computers meant complex drawings were often made over grids. The grids we made ourselves. We drew in Iso, Dimetric, Tirmetric and Two and Three point perspective, depending on our task.

About the time computers were coming around, aerospace pulled all it's roots out of So Cal and the Tech Ill industry vanished. I moved to the art department and have been there ever since. I could just have easily moved on to Photography or even Mechanical or Civil Engineering (I was very adept with Descriptive Geometry) but I went with the art dept. Sometimes I think it was a mistake. Anyway I'm not scanning any 20" by 30" inch vellums or blueprints so I guess I won't post any ancient Tech Ill drawings.

I started the drawing away from the edge because I like to work in the center of the cube, not against the wall. I make these things for myself from time to time. I've also experimented with making perspective grids where you can drag guides from the vanishing point. The Iso grid has axis available that can be pulled off the grid, positioned, and then used as temporary guides, and then be deleted.

Sometimes I think about buying a PC so I could play with AutoCad, but all those programs are so expensive it wil probably never happen.

[scottie]

[QUOTE=

Sometimes I think about buying a PC so I could play with AutoCad, but all those programs are so expensive it wil probably never happen.[/QUOTE]

Buy a MAC with the new PC chipset. That way you can run Windows programs on your MAC. If you have a teaching certificate or a student ID you can go to www.journeyed.com an buy AutoCAD for about $160. BTW, I worked with a great illustrator/artist. His name is Jay Blazen. He would take a set of helocopter transmission case blue prints and within a few hours he'd have a forshortened Axiomentric drawing completed, inked and outlined ready for shooting. I used to layup his callout text and print it out on our Veritype. He would cut it out and spay it and lay it down. Jay learned his trade in the army illustrating maps for President Johnson. He also did a lot of training manuals using cartoon like illustrations. He tried and tried to learn how to use Autotrol but he just wasn't meant to use a computer. I learned a lot from Jay. I still submitt my wish for a true Z coordinate in AI to AI at least once a year.

[The Repro Kid]

...He also did a lot of training manuals using cartoon like illustrations. ...
the cartoon like art was called "reflex art."

It was shot with reflex cameras.

[scottie]

ggfolio.com, in a panic, asks a question but never response to the many answers. Strange, no?

[Paul C]

The many excellent answers, may I add…

peace

[scottie]

I created a 1 unit cube. Using copy and paste the cube was copied and transformed to the base using the direct select tool. This resultant base was copied verticaly 1 unit to form the Top. Cube A was then copied to attach to the right side of base and top then transformed to snap to the back of the base and top. The right side was then copied and moved to snap to the left side of the base. Cube A was then copied and attached to create the front surface. Then copied and pasted again to create the back face. All sides are then moved using Apple-[ (move to back) or Apple-] (move to front) so as to correctly order the sides if filled. So from one Shape the illusion of a 3D cube was created. Notice that the cube shape, filled and unfilled was then placed in to the Symbols library for future use. The cube can be made long or tall by using the direct select tool and draging to a desired width or hight. The orthographic projection is up to you, just transform-drag to the fullness you like. No scaling/rotating required. Time to construct the 2 1/2 D Cube the first time, less than a minut. No construction time from then on once it's droped into the sysmbols lib.

By accident I found that if you drop your shape into the Swatch pallet, instead of the Symbols pallet, you do not have to expand the shape after draging it to your artboard. It will be grouped though.

[The Repro Kid]

That's way cool. I use lots of symbols at my gig and I have to expand most of them.

But I'll probably still keep them in my custom symbols library because others work on the files as well and I don't want to do anything too weird. And I don't want symbols in the plate list for the printers.

[Paul C]

That is an amazing discovery Scottie. I'm sure it will come in handy for me someday…

peace

[dognamedblue]

cool thread
will have a fiddle around later

.d.n.b.

[kialua]

Brings back memories. Did exploded views of Pako film proscessing machines and Litton Microwave ovens. Worked with a gal that had escaped from Russia and she was in awe of our "technology" back in 75. She didn't have any blueline machines and they had to hand copy all their drawings endlessly in Russia.

How nice to draw a threaded bolt and use it forever, adapting to the drawing as needed. But didn't stay with Tech illustrating long enough to see the computers come into use.

Great info guys. Yeah, wonder why the guy that asked never responded. Mabye he is too busy trying all your ideas.

[The Repro Kid]

Or scratching his head, off in some corner?
;)