Simple Isometric Grid

[Gawa]

Set your page size and orientation (mine is A4 Landscape)
Right click on layers tab and insert a new layer named IsoGrid
Right click anywhere on page and click on "Insert Snap Point/Line"
Select vertical type and make position 0.00mm
Do the same for Horizontal
Left click on horizontal ruler, keeping mouse button down, drag a new snap line onto page.
Right click and select "edit snap line" and set position to 2.5mm
Make another Horizontal snap line and make position 5mm
Make two vertical snap lines 4.33 and 8.66
Right click on the drawing and make sure your "snaps" are all selected.
Now draw a diamond shape with a line vertical line down the middle.
Select all the line you have made, go to -edit-duplicate
Set number of copies to 33. X axis to 8.66 and Y axis to 0 click ok
Select all the horizontal diamonds and go to -edit-duplicate
Set number of copies to 38. X axis to 0 Y axis to 5. click ok
Trim off the page what you wont need.
Right click on the snap lines and delete all of them
Select all the line you have drawn. (The entire page and change to a lighter color. Mine is blue/gray
Right click on the IsoGrid tab uncheck printable. check locked. click ok
Now you have your isometric grid.

Enjoy.

[Tommy27]

what's is the purpose of this grid?

[Gawa]

I use isometric grids mainly for isometric piping diagrams. I have been using CAD software for this before but not everybody has CAD. This way I can share layouts with clients easily. It make drawing and editing piping diagrams easy and quick.

[Tommy27]

i still don't understand...
would you please post a screenshot ?m

[Gawa]

How do I post an image. Remember I am a newbie

[Tommy27]

make a screenshot of that grid.

you may use screencapture sofware like FastStone Capture ( http://www.faststone.org/FSCapturerDownload.htm )

or you may use the "stamp" key of your keyboard and paste it inside any graphic sotware of you PC (even MS Paint)

then save it to jpeg and upload it to an image hosting site like:
http://xs.to/ or http://imageshack.us/

follow website isntrctions and post here the link ti the uploaded picture

[keme]

[Tommy27]

thanks. i understand now.

[karmin]

I've wanted an isometric grid in Draw for ages. I like your idea but it doesn't work. A true iso grid should coincide with the grid spacing - unfortunately, yours doesn't. To test your method after I'd followed the intructions, I set the grid to 10mm with zero points. I selected a straight line tool and it would not snap to your iso points as set by the diamonds, but instead, carried on snapping to the 10mm points both horizontally and vertically. Good try though. Please let me know if I've done something wrong and mis-read your instructions.

[keme]

To use that isometric grid you should turn off snapping to the Draw grid, and turn on snapping to object points.
(This is a workaround, so while you have made a grid, it's still not a "grid" from Draw's point of view, but rather a set of line objects.)

Menu item Tools - Options, branch OpenOffice.org Draw - Grid
In the Snap section, tick To object points and untick the other options.

[karmin]

OK. Thanks for that. I got the snap to work. Two more points:
1 How do I stop selecting the diamonds when I want to draw over the iso grid?
2 How do I use real time measurements, say a 3D box 41mm x 38mm x 25mm high?

[Gawa]

To be very honest I do not use an Isometric grid. It has limitations. What I do is enter my line lengths and set the rotation of the lines. So to draw your 3D box.
Draw a vertical line while holding down he shift key.
With the line selected, right click-position and size.
Set height to 25 (assuming your units are in millimetres )
Leave the "Keep Ratio" box unchecked.
Next, draw a horizontal line with the shift key down.
Select position and size. I use this a lot so I put it in a custom tool bar
Set the width FIRST to 41mm then the rotation to 30 degrees.
Set your snaps to "Snap to object points" drag the line and it will snap to the
bottom of the vertical line.
Do the same but set the rotation of your 38mm line to 150 degrees.
Drag and place the line where the other two lines join.
Now you can copy and paste the other lines in place to complete your box.
Select all items and group the together so it is easier to move around.

To stop selecting the diamonds, One way is undo your snaps. This is also in my custom tool bar

I know this seems tedious but once you get the hang of things and all your tools set. It can be quite fast.
I have an example of what I have done using Draw as a CAD package.
Go to www.lautman.net/mark/coo/index.html
Scroll to the bottom of the page for the CAD example.

[karmin]

Thanks for all your trouble Gavin. All I want is for the OOo developers to input an option that skews the grid matrix at 30deg left and right, but still maintains all the grid points and grid lock. I had all this on my first computer (an Acorn RISC PC - 1992 - of which you have probably not heard) which came with a built in drawing program that did exactly that. It just seems a basic thing to me to be added to the program. Once people realised what an isometric grid was used for, I'm sure that it would be used widely. I am a high school teacher of Technology and Graphics and this is why I was interested in what you were doing. I use isometric a lot when writing units of work for my students.
_________________
Blessings,
Alan

[keme]

If you want to use the mouse to rotate your lines, that's possible too. Just set rotation to snap at set angles. (The default is 15 degrees, which is fine. For better guidance you can use 30 degrees too.)

Menu item Tools - Options, branch OpenOffice.org Draw - Grid, like previously
In the Snap position section, tick When rotating and enter a usable angle (a matter of taste, but it should be a fraction of 30, so I'd say 10, 15, or 30)

Click the rotate tool (circle arrow icon) or menu item Modify - Rotate to enable rotating.