Has anybody ever done this (true isometric, no fudged overlaps, etc)??
Is there a tutorial on how (The Draw tutorials that sort of cover this dont really work or reflect the behavior of the tool)?
Oh heck: I feel lucky: Does anybody know how to control with precision subregions of a group or shape. I.e. if one wanted to grow say the left side of a square by 5.24mm exactly, how is it done?
Depends on how much precision you qualify as necessary. For a 45 degree isometric it’s relatively easy, you’d only have to calculate the short sides of a triangulation. A 60/30 isocube needs some additional calculations; being lazy I’d definately fire up some CAD software to produce a nice SVG cube.
A 45 degree isocube with dimensions of 5.00cm; draw a rectangle (press Shift for equal dimensions), right click → Position and Size; give width and height as 5.00cm. Apply. Then go to Edit → Duplicate and choose 1 copy. Now, right-click on the copy and select Position and Size again; go to the Slant and Corner Radius tab, set slant angle as 45 degrees.
Then in the Position and Size tab; set Size : Width as 3,535533906cm which is the Pythagorean value I calculated; √(5.00²/2). Draw will round the number up to 3.54, please use more accurate units than centimeters, this is only for demonstration.
The resulting polygon can be duplicated, flipped and rotated to construct the cube, alignment to gridpoints helps (at least with such simple dimensions).
Maybe this is possible some other way I’m not aware of, already tried to manipulate the included shapes in Draw without much luck (precision-wise that is).
that doesnt work…numerous pieces of this process does not work in 3.5.x
For example…flip of a plane rotates it in the Z direction…so cant do reflection
For example…using the offsets, it stretches entire plane…so loose the 45 degree angle on the edges
for example…if you stretch on edge of plane, loose 45 degree precision…so cant hold relationship (planes overlap)
It just doesnt work anything like the tutorials.
Sorry to hear. I did this on LibreOffice 3.5.4.2 on LinuxMint13. Snap to grid enabled, holding down Shift while rotating constrains the angle to 15 degree segments.
So lets keep this simple
This whole libre office is becoming more an more a toy (stablility problems, tutorials are worthless, and now need special software to post a picture)…what a joke
A couple of things:
1: your drawing above is not isometric…really some sort of kids dream
2. Snap to grid will never work because the X spacing is different than Y spacing are different for isometrics
(might be able to get away with the layman’s approximation of X:Y of 2:1…but that is another matter)
So I bit the bullet and upgraded to 3.6 from 3.5.1
Good news:
- Flip now works as advertised
Bad news:
- Shearing is still wrong…period (at least not as documented in 3.5.4 tutorial)
- 3D shapes with perspective off are still very tough to line up for isometric perspectives
- Cant edit 3D shape to extend on an axis (from cube to long block)
- Using the manifold approach suggested above means manually editing the group to extend given manifolds
(more a nuisance than a problem)
- Still no precision control of X, Y, Z dimensions (on 3D block or manifolds, at least I could find)
- not sure why perspective on 3D effects would default to on…I guess OO assumes the world wants a walleye view of things
Bottom line…a small improvement…but nothing to write to home about. (Draw on a trajectory to make Rel 5 usable)
BTW…I am not expecting anything more than what Visio, Sketchup (at least OO UI is better), etc can do…not looking for a CAD program, just looking for something that can do basic 3D stuff as advertized.
Update on my travails
Man is Draw a mess!!!
Looks like the manifold approach (after playing with a gizzillion settings) is about the only way I found so far to make any sort of ISO block. Got to mess with the snap settings, the grid settings, etc just to get the cursor to move with appropriate precision and snap the manifolds together appropriately.
The inability to specify a 2D box on say round numbers (20mm X 20mm) is quite interesting…not sure what the point of that is.??? (20mm x 20mm…is either 19.83mm x 19.83mm or 20.17mm x 20.17 mm)
Next I tried to use some of Draw’s intelligence (or lack there of).
So bottom line, so far the ONLY way I have found to do any sort of decent (not overly precise but decent) ISO block is to use the manifold approach and play with the Draw settings extensively.
Is there ANY plans at all in making draw behave as would be needed to support any Mech Drawing 101 class??? Or any plans to open up Draw to macros so somebody could roll up their sleeves and bypass the hubris by making Macros that do what is required? Hey, here is a thought, maybe, for next release of Draw, testcase 1,045,392 involves actually drawing an Isometric Cube.of say 20mm x 20mm x 20mm (however one makes that work, it should be posted as a tutorial)
Since Sketchup does all this correctly (even though its UI is really quite odd) and Visio 2013 appears to have thought this through pretty well based on initial attempts…lots of opportunity to “enhance” Draw!!!
Hi @vojo,
Sounds like there are a number of improvements that should be included in Draw. Please file an enhancement bug (or a few) and provide as much information about each new feature as possible. Don’t forget to mark your bug as an ‘enhancement’. The QA team will be happy to help you triage your feature request in the bugtracker.
Please post a link to any bugs you file in a comment below using the format “fdo#123456”.
Thanks!
