Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

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vojo
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Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by vojo »

I have struggled on and off for several months trying to understand how Draw does 3D.
(having been active with visio for 10 years and sketchup for 5....draw seems really really obtuse)

Anyway, does anybody have macros to do some Iso stuff? Iso cube, cylinder, etc.
all the rotates, edit points, etc require much too much mouse precision to be reasonable.

Anybody thought of bringing a python subsystem (python of vpython) to do the heavy lifting here?

Tutorials dont seem to relate to the hands on experience
Visio import filter is really not the way to go since it does not process all the cells successfully and there is alot of work ahead for that filter to handle anything reasonably complex.
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keme
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by keme »

Draw is a 2D drawing package. The 3D tools are really only visual effects to the 2D shapes. Albeit they can be rotated, there is no proper handling of the 3rd dimension.

As for isometric drawing, I know it was discussed in the old forum, which is now unavailable (domain is not maintained). I believe there was an outline of a solution, involving a manually created iso-grid on a background/locked layer. There are better tools for CAD type work, so unless you really need the tight OpenOffice integration, I'd look elsewhere. Overview of free/open-source alternatives.
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acknak
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by acknak »

I remember the old discussion; I offered that a rectangular grid can be used for simple drawings, but I seem to recall that someone had a better/more thorough suggestion involving some macros or add-on--maybe? My memory is fuzzy on that.

Doing anything more than the simplest kind of drawing with just a rectangular grid will be a big chore. For example, Draw's dimensions don't follow the projection, so you'd have to make your own--not impossible, of course, but a lot of extra work.
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vojo
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by vojo »

well ....visio users have been doing iso / 3D for years on a 2D tool.....and even MS with Visio 2013 is embracing what appears to be an easy to use approach to Iso/3D

If the draw engine was documented, I bet people could make it happen

One option...though I am not fluent enough in OO et al....would be a pipe to launch vpython and return the drawing objects.
Somebody could bolt on a decent UI to vpython (very powerful, but currently more like programming the shaped then running the code approach)
Anyway, with such a bridge, it would open up a whole new dimension (no pun intended) to what you could do with DRAW
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acknak
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by acknak »

Draw was designed for doing non-technical illustration, and I'm not sure how much impetus there is for getting it up to snuff for professional engineering work. Silk purse ... sow's ear, and all that.

Anyway, I know there are some people putting in a lot of work on OOo, and OOo Draw's, graphics layer. If you're interested in making some suggestions, you'll have to go through either the bug/issue system (I believe there is a request for this) or the developers' mailing list.

Here you go: Issue 74425: How about adding other types of grid, particularly an isometric grid?
You can register there and add your vote (up to two) or comment.

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vojo
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by vojo »

Just to be clear....I am NOT looking for Draw to do any sort of CAD work

Really only looking for Draw to do visio 2003 class work....otherwise, I am not sure what the point of Draw is RE impress???

Note....I did the picture that got used in this article (not commissioned for the article) in Visio 2003 5 years ago.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/15 ... structure/

Anyway, thanks
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keme
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by keme »

vojo wrote:....otherwise, I am not sure what the point of Draw is RE impress??? ...
Diferent toolsets and perspectives.
  • Impress is screen centered, so each page is a screen display. The user interface encourages creation of pages/slides that are compatible with various screen formats.
  • Draw is document centered. The frame to work within is a fixed paper size, which removes some flexibility but allows you to maintain precise alignment of objects.
  • Impress has better tools for automated presentation of dynamic content.
  • Draw has better tools for object modification (various shape intersections, grouping that is properly handled by the navigator), measurement (incl. scaling) and manipulating logical structure (layers).
Sure, those are not so different, and the tools could be incorporated into one package. It's a matter of taste, I guess.

I like to have separately configured interfaces for the presentation and document production phases. If I need something made in Impress, and Draw provides better tools for making it, I create in Draw and drag it over. Easier for me. Cumbersome for some. A matter of taste, or perhaps habit.
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smjg
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by smjg »

keme wrote:Draw is a 2D drawing package. The 3D tools are really only visual effects to the 2D shapes. Albeit they can be rotated, there is no proper handling of the 3rd dimension.
As I see it, it isn't really a matter of being able to handle a 3rd dimension. Rather, it's just a matter of adding two things:
  • The option of an isometric grid as an alternative to a rectangular grid
  • Some 3D shapes in isometric projection being added to the library of built-in shapes
I've seen one vector graphics program that has the first of these: the standard Draw program on the Acorn Archimedes. I find it surprising that hardly any other programs have this feature. I can imagine that depending on the program's coordinate system there may be issues of rounding error (with the square root of 3 being irrational), but strangely with this particular program I never experienced problems of my shapes slipping slightly off-grid even though I've kept the snap to grid option switched on all the time.
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Re: Drawing isometric shapes in Draw

Post by John_Ha »

Draw does not have an isometric grid and is not designed for drawing isometric projections so drawing isometric views will be very difficult.

If you want to draw isometric projections you are best to get a program designed to do it and import the result into Draw if it is important it is in Draw.
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