isometric drawing question

Cybernetic · Postby **Cybernetic** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:03 am

hi, im cybernetic. i have some questions about drawing isometric art in inkscape. if you look at the house, you will see that theres a big empty square in the front to the right its that big window. what i want to do is put a bay window there. however it eludes me how a bay window would be drawn in isometric view. also since this is my first isometric house( ive always sucked at any kind of art and like an idiot trying to gee into the hobby spent over 800 dollars on art software not including my bamboo pen which is just taking up space...) before i found inkscape.but i seem to be able to learn iso art maybe cause of my asperger spectrum) but i made a mistake as you can see with the size. its zoomed at 433 percent so how would i make the house larger while still have the house snap to the iso grid? thanx guys.

Postby **brynn** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:10 pm

Well, I was trying to post a reply, with a new file showing an example of a bay window. But apparently you edited your message, which caused it to have to go back through the approval system, at the same time

So my message could not be posted since there no longer existed the message I was replying to, lol! So I lost the message :lol:

But hang on, don't edit again, at least not until I post the message, and I'll have a reply for you

Postby **brynn** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:42 pm

Oh, nice work, Cybernetic!
And welcome to InkscapeForum!

I could more easily draw an example of a bay window, than describe it. But since I grabbed your file before you removed the attachment and inserted the screenshot, I'll try both. So of course a bay window is essentially an arc, and they're usually symmetrical. But it's really tricky on the isometric grid....I'm not sure if you could actually use an arc made with the ellipse tool....hhhmm..... Anyway, I managed to draw a line with 6 nodes -- 2 end nodes, and 4 corner nodes describing obtuse angles. ( First I marked the horizontal center of the window. Then I counted gridmarks, the same number on each side of center, to note the placement of the nodes. Then drew the line with the Pen tool.) By using snap to grid, I was able to make it exactly symmetric. I could easily change the nodes to smooth, and probably make a nice smooth arc. But I'll leave them as they are, so you can experiment, if you want. Also, it's probably not the right size, and maybe not even in the right window, lol.

Scaling would be easy. Make sure snapping to a grid is enabled, select everything, hold Shift and Ctrl, then grab a corner arrow and drag. Release when it's the right size, and it will automatically snap right to the grid, like it was before, but bigger. You could also use the Transform dialog, but would have to do some math, to make it the right size, to be aligned with the grid like it was before. So in this case, imo, dragging would be the better technique.

Here's the sample file:

M-Mansion bay example.svg: (21.96 KiB) Downloaded 379 times

shawnhcorey · Postby **shawnhcorey** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 5:46 am

FYI: Another manual: Inkscape FOSS manual.

Cybernetic · Postby **Cybernetic** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:40 am

i think i figured it out. what i did was first establish where the angle was on the isometric plane then i moved each line over 4 triangles, then i used no grid because of the weird non iso angles, and skewed them. does this look right? also, i notice that pen never stays the thickness i want it to. i haveto keep manualy adjusting the pen thickness as the pen doesnt remember my chosen line thickness, i was reading about a feature called last used line, but it not really working. also, i tried the shift ctrl thing on the grid but, it seemed to work the first time, now the lines wont adjust to grid anymore. dunno why.

Postby **druban** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 12:56 pm

To draw a circle on an isometric grid (that can be ctrl scaled and used everywhere else on the same grid):

1. Decide what size your circle/ellipse is going to be. I chose four by four.

: bitmap1.png (39.52 KiB) Viewed 10109 times

(The rhombus is only drawn to show you which grid lines I am using, you don't need to draw it.)
2. With the cursor snapped to the center of your rhombus and holding down ctrl
and shift, draw a circle with diameter equal to the long diagonal of the rhombus.

: bitmap2.png (70.97 KiB) Viewed 10109 times

3. Shift scale the circle vertically until it becomes an ellipse with its minor axis
equal to the short diagonal of the rhombus.

: bitmap3.png (51.8 KiB) Viewed 10109 times

(cont'd.)

Postby **druban** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 1:02 pm

(cont'd.)

4. Now ctrl shift scale the ellipse until it touches the midpoints of
all four sides of the rhombus.

: bitmap4.png (68.84 KiB) Viewed 10109 times

Oh, you meant that kind of bay window! Well, I guess Brynn and I were both thinking of the curved kind!

:oops:

Neeeever mind...

Cybernetic · Postby **Cybernetic** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:25 pm

no thats helpful all the same. ill keep at it.

Postby **brynn** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 11:33 pm

Oh good, well at least I had the right window, lol!
I think it looks fine, Cybernetic. I'm not sure why you needed to skew it, but it looks good to the eye, even though it might not technically have proper angles.

The setting for "last line used" is in Inkscape Preferences > Pen tool > Last used style. Once you click that option, draw a line and set the width, it should always draw at that width (until you change it).

Ok, I may not have been clear. Shift + Ctrl does not cause the snapping to the grid. To have it snap to the grid, you have to enable Snapping and snap to grid. There's a special toolbar for snapping -- in version 0.48, and 0.47, if I recall -- which makes it really easy. And I see by your screenshot that you must have at least 0.48 because of the Spray tool. But I see that your Snap control bar is not shown. Please go to View menu > Show/Hide to reveal it. Shift + Ctrl makes the selection scale from the center, and keep dimensions the same. Otherwise, it would scale to the direction of whichever corner arrow you use to scale, and you would lose dimensions.

Wow druban! I was pretty sure that a regular circle would not work for the bay window, but I could not think of an easy way to make an ellipse of the right proportions for the isometric projection. That is nice info to have, so I'm glad you posted anyway.

RobA · Postby **RobA** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 6:14 am

EDIT - Ninjad! (and I think the multipane window is called a "bow window" around here, not a bay window...)

Here is my quick go at a bay window-

Just follow the isolines the size you want. (green lines) You will have to construct back to get the inset of the angled faces window (red lines) as they won't line up to snaps.

-Rob A>

GAngus · Postby **GAngus** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:01 am

Here's a more rounded bay version.
How ?? I just turned off snap to grid and drew 2 arcs (using circle/arc tool) and then drew some bezier lines.
I also had to mask some off the inner areas where the lines showed through.
No, it's not particularly accurate, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.
I guess you already knew this, right ?

(hope I can upload it ok...)

Cybernetic · Postby **Cybernetic** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:55 am

im having a problem, i want to make my house larger but as you can see here using shift ctrl, the image doesnt snap when enlarged. its off the grid.

Postby **brynn** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:34 pm

I'm still not seeing the Snap control bar on your screenshot. You need to enable snapping to align it to the grid (as I mentioned b4)

Cybernetic · Postby **Cybernetic** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:40 pm

brynn wrote:I'm still not seeing the Snap control bar on your screenshot. You need to enable snapping to align it to the grid (as I mentioned b4)

tiny pics cutting off the right, so the snapping grid wasn't viewable. im using image shack now. also, i have the same settings in document properties. (dunno if that makes a difference) maybe i need to adjust my snap settings. heres a screen shot of my current snap settings.

http://img849.imageshack.us/i/snapnotsnaping.png/

:edit:for some reason uploaded pics to the inkscape forums cut off the right side of the pic. so heres the direct link to a non resized pic.

Postby **brynn** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 4:53 am

Oooh, ok!
The settings in Doc Props are not exactly the same, but they adjust the same thing -- snapping. In Doc Props, you have the opportunity to set the strength of the snap. The weakest snap is "Snap only when closer than" with the slider set to 1. The strongest snap is "Always Snap". And I don't know why, but in my experience, 'always snap' makes for a stronger snap than 'only when closer than' 50!

Another thing you might do, is select "Snap to cusp nodes" on the control bar, in addition to how you have it set currently. I say this because you're probably using either all or mostly all cusp nodes in your drawing. And one more tip -- sometimes zooming in closer helps. You could use Ctrl + A to select everything (since you won't be able to drag-select if you're zoomed in), and zoom in on the area where you're planning to grab and snap.

And yet another tip -- In Inkscape Preferences > Snapping, you have the option to "Only snap the node closest to the pointer". I like to use this, because it makes snapping more predictable. Otherwise, and I think this is correct, that the closest node to the closest target (in this case, grid intersection) is where the snap occurs. And when snapping to a grid, there are almost countless targets

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