Isometric tools

[Gaz]

Something that is missing from Adobe Illustrator, and would be good in Affinity Designer are Technical Illustration Tools:-

 

 

Isometric Grid, allowing constraint along 30º as well as vertical

Isometric elipses (35º Elipses, with minor axis constrained to Grid Axis)

 

Ability to join circles and ellipses with a tangent line tool, connecting one circle to another with a line.

 

Ability to delete line or curve up to another intersecting line / lines / curves with a key stroke.

 

 1  Draw a line or curve,

 2  Draw two additional lines / curves, both overlapping original at different locations,

 3  Select the middle part of the first line / curve

 4  Press a key to delete the part of the line / curve up to each of the intersecting lines curves.

 5  Option to select multiple lines / curves and perform this to all of them at the same time would be living the dream :-)

Thanks

Gaz

 

3dtp Ltd

[Clayton]

These tools would be amazing. Tangent snapping alone would be incredible for a wide range of applications from logo design to scientific illustration, not just isometric technical illustration.

[NURBS]

I have registered just to be able to support this. Not sure about the isometrics, but tangent snapping and trimming would be a godsend in a design drawing software.

[AshTeriyaki]

There's isometric grids in affinity already. Not sure about the rest.

[Gaz]

There's isometric grids in affinity already. Not sure about the rest.

 

I can get a standard flat 2D grid to show, but can't seem to find an Isometric grid anywhere.

Any idea how to access it ? The Help only mentions a flat 2D grid.

 

An Isometric grid would be very useful.

 

 

 

 

Just found it… View > Grid and Axis Manager  :)

[Ben]

We like to hide the useful stuff in menus...  ;)

[A_B_C]

+1  :)

[Gaz]

I've also discovered that holding CMD down, allows you to draw a circle from the centre, holding down the CTRL key draws to the major axis, and holding down shift constrains the ellipses size.

This really is a brilliant drawing program, and so much slicker than Illustrator once you find everything.

 

Can I make a suggestion that the Circle tool gets a sub menu that creates ellipses at different angles. Perhaps the current selected angle could appear in the tool bar, within the circle.

Here's a picture of how I'd see it working.  :)

 

[DutchDude]

All of the above. Very useful.

[Robcis]

Are there any developments in regards to this? This would be tremendously useful to multiple different design disciplines.  

[Robcis]

By the way, I know that this is an old video, but Vectorworks app seems to be able to do what the OP is illustrating here. It's one of the only apps that can do it.  

[Ben]

Not yet.

 

The only problem we have with tangents is that we don't have true circles or ellipses.  They are Cubic Bezier quadrant approximations.  We could do something to facilitate creating a tangent line, but the tangent point would be subject to a degree of inaccuracy. This might be fine for purely visual items.

 

I was actually looking at the maths required for determining tangents to a Cubic Bezier (for other purposes) - and it is not trivial.  It requires finding the roots of a fifth degree polynomial, which can't be done easily.

[Ben]

BTW - we now have a feature that allows you to create and edit shapes on axonometric planes.  So, you can create a correct ellipse on an isometric plane.

 

On that note - I'm not sure that 35 degrees is an accurate ellipse for isometric.  I think the actual angle is fractional.