Projecting to Isometric and 3D

This Tech Tip explains how to project a 2D surround of a drawing of a safe, to 3D and isometric or orthographic views.

Select Settings > Drawing Settings and make changes to Drawing Settings as shown below. Then click OK.

Draw the plan view outline of the safe walls in 2D top view as shown below.

Draw text and dimensions onto their own layers (ie. create layers "TEXT" and "DIMENSIONS"), so that we can hide them when working on the 3D view.

We want to draw a 3D drawing using a plan view that will have Top, Front and Left View as shown above.

If you have drawn the safe walls using a polyline or a multiline, explode it to lines (Select the safe walls, then choose Tools > Explode > Explode Once from the menu).

While it is selected go to Modify > Drop, indicate the source point (in this case indicate a corner of the safe walls plan drawing) using Point Snap Mode. AllyCAD will prompt "Indicate the destination point". Do not click in the drawing yet. Change the current elevation to 600 (using the "Elev" input in the cad bar), and then enable DP Snap at the bottom of your AllyCAD window. Now click on the source point (the same point you indicated before), then right-click and select Quit.

Change to SW Isometric view (View > View Direction > SW Isometric). The plan view walls you copied should be 600 above the original plan view.

Right click and select Properties, or just press F4.

The properties bar should only have "Line" entities listed.

Change thickness to -600 since it is from the top to bottom. The drawing should be as the one below.

NB: It is not necessary to draw a Top view at different elevation if you are extruding the lines.

You could also draw the safe walls using an extruded polyline

Press ESC to deselect the drawing.

To render the drawing, right-click and select Render View, then right-click and select Render Settings, and change Render mode to Flat Shading and make changes as shown below. Then click OK.

It should look like the image below.

Right Click Quit Render View

Change back to Top View (View > View Direction > Top). Your drawing should look like this:

Change to Front View (View > View Direction > Front). Draw the "Front View" text as shown below (if you are asked to set DP = Current View, click Yes). Also draw the dimensions as shown. Remember to drawn the text and dimensions on the layers you created for them.

Your drawing should look like this:

Change to Left View (View > View Direction > Left). Draw the "Left View" text as shown below (if you are asked to set DP = Current View, click Yes). Also draw the dimensions as shown.

Your drawing should look like this:

At this point you can switch off the dimension layer visibility to hide the dimensions.

To set up Orthographic views, do the following:

Go to View > Setup Views, and select the second view from the bottom left:

The CAD window will be split into 4 views.

Change the bottom-left view to Top (click in the view, then select View > View Direction > Top). Then zoom all.

Change the bottom-right view to SW Isometric (click in the view, then select View > View Direction > SW isometric). Then zoom all.

Change the top-left view to Front (click in the view, then select View > View Direction > Front). Then zoom all.

Change top-right view to Left ((click in the view, then select View > View Direction > Left). Then zoom all.

The Final drawing should look like the one below

Change the view setup by going to View > Setup Views > Select single View (the first top view).

Close up your safe drawing.

Change view direction of the drawing to SW Isometric by going to View > View Direction. Switch off DP Snap at the bottom of screen.

Draw 3D face on the top and bottom of the safe by going to Draw > 3D Face > Face.

When done should look as the image below.