2D Isometric Drawing in AutoCAD

How to make 2D isometric drawing in  AutoCAD Isometric drawings are not actual 3D drawings, they are made with 2D geometries but they appear like 3D. Isometric drawing in AutoCAD can be made by tilting viewing angle to 30 degrees for all of its sides in the 2D plane.

In this article, I will show you methods of making an isometric drawing in  AutoCAD. For explaining this feature I will wil l use the geometry geo metry shown in the image above.

Isometric drawing in AutoCAD 2014 and older versions:  At first, you need to change your snap settings to isometric. Type DS on the command line and press enter. Drafting settings window will pop up from this window select snap and grid tab and make sure Isometric snap radio button is checked. Click OK to exit drafting settings window.

Now make sure ortho mode is turned on from the status bar, if it is not turned on then press F8 to turn it on.

You can now select isometric plane for your drawing by pressing the F5 key. The three Isoplanes available for selection are Isoplane top, right and left. Press F5 key to activate Isoplane top and then select line command and click anywhere in the drawing area to start your line. Specify a direction and type 5 on the command line then press enter, repeat this process by changing directions of line to make a closed square as shown in image A below.

Now press F5 again to change the Isoplane to right or left. Start line command again and make lines from three corners of the square of length 5 units towards downward direction as shown in the image B above.  Again change Isoplane to Top by pressing F5 key and join all three end points of the vertical lines to make a complete cube. In a similar way, you can make other isometric drawings as well.

Isometric drawing in AutoCAD 2015 and later versions: With AutoCAD 2015 and later versions, this process of creating an isometric drawing has been greatly simplified. You can directly start isometric drawing using ISODRAFT option of the status bar.

Click on ISODRAFT icon on the status bar as shown in the image above and select plane on which you want to create your drawing by pressing F5 key. Rest of the process is same as mentioned above. You can watch this video of making a sample isometric drawing in AutoCAD, the example in the video uses a more complex geometry than the example used in the article.

How to make isometric dimension and text in AutoCAD I will tell you about making isometric dimension and text in AutoCAD drawing. For explaining this feature I will use a simple isometric cube as shown in the image below. If you want to learn about making isometric geometries in AutoCAD then follow the related article. Related: How to make Isometric drawing in AutoCAD

Making Isometric Dimensions: Make aligned dimensions A, B and C on the geometry as shown in drawing A above using DIMALIGNED command. Now type DIMEDIT on the command line and press enter, select oblique from the command line as shown in the image below.

Now click on dimension marked A from drawing shown above and press enter. Command line will prompt you to select an angle to align this dimension type 30 and press enter again. Your dimension will now align with the geometry to make it look like isometric dimension. For dimensions B and C you can use the same method with the oblique angle of 30 and -30 respectively. Your final drawing will look like this after using DIMEDIT on all three dimensions.

Making Isometric Dimension Text: The dimensions now look correct but when you look closely at dimension text they are still not properly aligned as per drawing. You need to make changes to dimension text also in order to make it look normal. Type DIMTEDIT on the command line and press enter then click on the dimension which you want to edit, I am selecting dimension C for this case.

From the command line, select Angle option and type an angle of 30 degrees then press enter. The dimension text will now align with the dimension line. For dimensions, A and B use an angle of 30 and -30 degrees respectively in DIMTEDIT command.

Making Isometric Text: To write text on the isometric cube type TEXT on the command line and press Enter. Now click on the face of cube towards dimension C and enter a text height value and rotation angle of 30 degrees in the command line prompts. Type any text and press enter twice to exit the TEXT command, I am using “Text” as the sample text on the isometric cube.

Repeat the process of writing text on the face of cube towards dimension B as well, but in this case change angle of text to -30 degrees keeping all other parameters unchanged. Now select text on the face of dimension C then right click and select properties from the contextual menu. From the Text panel of properties palette change value of Obliquing to 30. Repeat the process for text on cube facing dimension B but in this case change obliquing value to -30. The final drawing with isometric dimension and text will look like the image shown below.

If steps mentioned in the article is not clear to you then you can watch the following video as well.