What Isometric Drawing Is And When It May Be Useful
By John Potter
Isometric drawings (or isometric projections) represent three dimensional objects without the perspective tapering off towards one or more vanishing points. In other words…things in an isometric drawing don’t get smaller at a distance. This makes the drawings look somewhat realistic while retaining much of the geometric information of a schematic. You may hear it refred to as a form of axonometric projection or drawing.
The fact that so much geometric information remains has made this type of drawing a common sight in machine shops for generations, but there are other qualities of isometric drawing that have made them popular as well. For one thing drawn objects don’t assume more importance than others based upon their scale in relation to their position since position doesn’t effect their scale. All drawn objects scale represents their scale in proportion to one another regardless of where they are.
The facts that you can move things around so easily makes it possible to make modular drawings with elements (drawn objects) that can be moved around without messing up your drawing. An object can be repeated or placed randomly without negative consequences. That fact hasn’t been overlooked by the gaming industry and you’ve probably played a game or sim that uses isometric drawing.
I’ve always like using this method to create maps. Now as I find myself promoting a new map project I decided to post this article providing a little more insight. With any luck I will have a new map to associate with this article before too long.
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| Map I created using isometric projection |
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| My latest isometric illustration |
