Custom Isometric/Parallel Projection Grids

Question

I found these attached designs online while looking for isometric illustrations. These designs are not on the standard isometric grid (30 degrees), rather they have different angles.

Has someone worked on such angle/grid before? What are they known as? How can to create custom grids and what things to keep in mind while designing one? What are some good sets of angles? Can anyone share some resources/tutorial/workflow around these?

Please note, I'm not talking about the standard 30-degrees isometric grid that everyone uses.

Answer 1

While this is not a direct answer, hopefully it gives you some ideas on where to start for when it comes to custom grids.

Terminology: Axonometric

There's some good info on WikiPedia: Axonometric projection.

Axonometric projection is a type of parallel projection used for creating a pictorial drawing of an object, where the object is rotated along one or more of its axes relative to the plane of projection.

The four types of axonometric projections are isometric projection, dimetric projection, trimetric projection, and oblique projection, depending on the exact angle at which the view deviates from the orthogonal.

– Axonometric projection

I have always liked this example image: Comparison of several types of graphical projection:

(By SharkD - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8497328)

Example: 30º angles using custom guides

In illustrator, you can draw a path, right click, and choose to convert it to a guide. This could work well if you specify construction guides at desired angles in preferences, and then copy/paste/duplicate your guides to create a custom iso grid. For example:

Example preference:

Or using VectorScribe’s “protractor” panel:

Another example:

Using Hot Door CADtools

One day I had some issues working with 45º and 30º axo/iso grids using CADtools 7, so I emailed their support:

Question:

How do I set the CADaxonometric to work with 45º and 30º axo/iso grids? When I type in 45º in both 3d boxes, and click on a cube face, that doesn't seem to align my object to the 45º grid (for example).

Answer:

That’s because the angles are in 3D, not 2D. In CADtools 7, as you know, we had 2D angle fields that would translate into 3D. We removed them due to time constraints (the calculations were very intense), but plan to add them back in CADtools 10. In the meantime, here are the 2D to 3D settings you can use:

2D      | 3D
------- | -------
45 x 45 | 45 x 80
15 x 60 | 21 x 42
15 x 45 | 27 x 31
15 x 30 | 34 x 23

I thought that was interesting.