hi i was just curious, if i wanted to draw a close to precise exterior draft of a house, just for kicks and giggles, stead of a cartoon pixel house could i? does inkscape support feet and inches measurements. so say, i was creating a door six half feet tall, and three feet wide, could i? sorta like how sketchup works in 2d mode. or is inkscape more a fun, playful tool then a serious draft tool.

:edit: just realized, this isnt possible because thats not how isometric building are drawn afaik

Hi Cybernetic,
I'm not clear what you're asking.
Inkscape can use all sorts of unit measurements, including feet and inches. But I'm not familiar with Sketchup, so not sure if that's what you mean. I think probably most people use Inkscape for art, but Inkscape can do some quite techical work. Although maybe not like drafting -- is that what you mean?

Yes, Inkscape can draw a 3' x 6' door. However, large drawings can slow Inkscape to a crawl (large in file size not necessarily in dimension)

...because thats not how isometric building are drawn...

What's not how isometric buildings are drawn??

ok, my mistake, what i meant was, (im not very good at math) if you draw a 30 degree line, how would you measure it so you could see that your height and width was 3' by 6'? like wise, your walls were 10' high. if doing this requires complex drafting math then ill stick with cartoony iso art. i wasn't sure if this was something your average bad at math joe could do?

Most carpenters I know measure everything in inches. A 6 x 3 ft. door would be 72 x 36.

You should create an Axonometric grid. Start with File->Document Properties... (Shift+Ctrl+D). Then choose the Grids tab, and change the selection to Axonometric grid and press New. Set the Grid units to "in", Spacing Y to 0.25, and the Major grid line every: to 4.

Every major gird line represents a foot and every minor grid line is 3 inches. You have to turn snap off if you are drawing something that is not a multiple of 3 inches.

Or, you can draw it at three times it size; every minor grid line is an inch and use Object->Transform... to scale it down to the correct size.

You are correct in that the x-axis ruler units will not correspond to the x and z axes of an isometric grid. There is no provision in Inkscape to display a different scale on one ruler. Not much call for such a feature; can't think of any reason why a properly laid out isometric grid would not provide an adequate workaround.

is inkscape more a fun, playful tool then a serious draft tool

A great many people use Inkscape regularly to do serious work.

As long as you use the "properly laid out" isometric or axonomic grid, like druban said, and with snapping, you could easily draw such as you describe, with very little math required