Lesson 8: Isometric Drawing

By Isidro V. Marfori III

Isometric drawing is essential to the engineering filed. Through the isometric drawing, it is easier to imagine how a part
or a drawing would look like. Some isometric drawing has no details such as dimension and annotation. This type of
isometric drawing is usually accompanied by orthographic drawings with complete detail and annotation.

I. Setting up AutoCAD for isometric drawing.

1. Open the drafting settings window and select the snap and grid tab. Go to tools from the main menu and
select drafting settings from the drop down menu.

2. In the snap type & style section, select isometric snap.

3. Select the polar tracking tab.

4. Enable polar tracking by clicking the white square just beside the polar tracking on. Set the increment angle to
30 degrees.
 5. Click the OK button.

This will change the crosshair to an isometric mode. This is very useful for creating isometric circles.

6. Press F5 from the keyboard several times and observe the cursor.
F5 will allow the cursor to change orientation from top to front and then to side.

II. Creating isometric lines.

Isometric lines are simply lines that are inclined at a 30 degree angle. You can use the length angle method to create
isometric lines. However, using this method will make the designing process difficult since you have to type the
length and then angle every time you need to create isometric lines.

One easy method to create isometric lines is to use the polar tracking feature of AutoCAD, which was already set
up from the previous procedure.

The following are procedures to use polar tracking.

1. Start the line command by clicking the line icon from the draw toolbar or by typing L and then pressing enter.
2. Specify the first point.
3. To specify the next point, incline the cursor to an approximately 30 degree angle until the polar tracking line
appears. The polar tracking line is a doted line.
 4. Type the length of the line and press enter. Example: 300

Note:
The polar tracking increment angle is 30 degrees. This means that the lines that can be created can be
horizontal, 30 degree or 60 degree lines.

III. Creating isometric circle

Isometric circles are simply parallelogram ellipse with the parallelogram inclined at a 30 degree angle. Therefore, to
create an isometric circle, we will use the ellipse command instead of the circle command.

The following are procedures in creating ellipse.

1. Click the ellipse icon located at the draw toolbar or type el and press enter.

The command line will display:

2. Select Isocircle from the options. Therefore, type I and press enter.
The command line will display:
3. Click any point in the work area.
4. Move the crosshair away from the center point of the ellipse.

5. Press The F5 key from the keyboard and observe the preview of the ellipse.
By pressing the F5 key, we can change the orientation of the isometric circle.

6. Type the radius of the isometric circle. Example: 150

IV. Dimensioning in isometric drawing
To create dimensions for an isometric drawing, we can use he dimension tools in the dimension toolbar. For the
isometric lines that are inclined at a 30 degree angle, we can use the aligned dimension tool. For vertical lines, we
can use the linear dimension tool. However, the dimensions in a isometric drawing should also be inclines at a 30
degree angle. Using the linear and aligned dimension will make the dimension parallel, which is not appropriate for
isometric drawings.

In order to correct this, we will use the dimension edit toolbar.

The following are procedures on how to use the dimension edit tool.

1. Click the dimension edit tool located at the dimension toolbar.

The command line will display:

2. Select Oblique for the options. Therefore, type O and press enter.
The command line will display:

3. Select one or more dimensions by clicking on it in the work area and then press enter.
The command line will display:
 4. Enter the obliquing angle and press enter.
Follow the following convention for the obliquing angle.

The angles in yellow are the obliquing angles of the isometric dimensions. Notice that all are inclined with
reference to the horizontal line.

V. Creating dimension for isometric circles

Using the diameter or radius dimension tool will not work on ellipses. Therefore, we will use the aligned dimension
to create dimension for ellipse or isometric circles.

The following are steps in creating dimension for isometric circle.

1. Create a 30 degree line across an isometric circle. Make sure that the 30 degree line intersects the isometric
circle and passes through the center.
2. Use the aligned dimension tool. Make sure to select the intersections of the isometric circle and the line.

3. Use dimension edit tool to orient the dimension properly.

4. Remove or ease the line by selecting it and pressing the delete key.