How to make Isometric drawing in ZWCAD

An isometric drawing is a 3D representation of an object in a 2D workspace.

This can be achieved by tilting the viewing angle by 30 degrees on all the sides in a 2D plane.

You can make isometric drawings in ZWCAD quite easily with a few readymade tools and commands and in the article, we will learn it.

For this example, we will make an isometric drawing that looks like the image shown above.

The video version of the article is right above this line but if you prefer the article then read on.

Preparing the drawing

ZWCAD opens with a default orthographic plane.

In order to change it to an isometric plane we need to right click on the “Grid Display” in the status bar and click on the settings options.

In the Drafting Settings window that shows up, change the snap type from rectangular to isometric Snap as shown in the following image.

After making these updates you will now notice two changes.

Firstly, the grid has changed from square to a rectangular shape and secondly the cursor has also tilted to an angle of 30 degrees.

Now when you press the “F5” function key, you can change the plane of the cursor which is also called as isometric plane to Top, Left, Right, Bottom.

You can even type ISOPLANE in the command line and then select the required plane from the list to directly move on that plane.

You can also turn off the grid by pressing the grid icon on the status bar just in case you want a clear view of the drawing workspace.

As the next step we need to change the isometric angle.

To do so we need to right click on the Polar tracking option on the status bar and click on settings as shown in the following image.

In the increment angle dropdown menu select the 30 degrees angle as the isometric drawings are drawn at an angle of 30 degree.

For the unit you can use mm, inch or any other unit as this exercise will be the same irrespective of the unit being used.

For this example, I am going with the predefined unit of the drawing template which I am not changing here.

Creating isometric drawing

Now we are completely ready to make the isometric drawings.

Click on the Line tool available on the ribbon pallet under the Home tab and click anywhere in the drawing space to start the line command.

Enter the length of 5 units as shown in the figure below.

Then move to the next direction at 30 degrees and enter 5 for the length for the line.

Repeat the steps to complete the rectangle as shown in the figure below.

Without exiting from the command move up at 90 degrees and draw the line of length 10 units.

Then continue drawing the line 5 units 30 degree upwards and the join it back to the section given below.

Now you can use the copy command available in the home tab under ribbon pallet and select the three lines which you had just created and copy it backwards at a distance of 1.5 units.

Repeat the same steps for the bottom three lines as given in the image below.

Now click on the Fillet option available on the home tab in the ribbon pallet and select the two lines to merge them in a singe point.

For the fillet radius use 0 as it will merge the lines at one sharp corner.

Add more lines as shown in the figure below to have more details in the drawing.

Use the trim tool available in the home tab under the ribbon palette to delete the unwanted lines from the design as shown in the figure below.

Creating Circle in Isometric drawing

Creating a circle for an isometric drawing is slightly different from a regular circle.

First of all, press F5 so that the Isoplane right is activated and now select Axis End Ellipse under the Ellipse drop down in the ribbon pallet.

Then type “I” and press enter key to select the “Isocircle” option from the list of options available on the command line.

Click at the midpoint of the top line and make the circle.

Repeat the same process creating circle with the same midpoint but with a radius of 1.4 units.

The resulting drawing should like the following image.

Trim the bottom part of the circle and delete the lines drawn at the back to get a design as shown in the image below.

Use the Copy command to copy the arc and the circle and move it in the backward direction to a distance of 1.5 units.

Again, use the trim command to clean the drawing as shown in the figure below.

Similarly repeat the same steps to create another circle in the bottom part.

If the center of the square part the bottom is not visible, then you can create a line connecting two opposing midpoints as shown in the following image and then make the circle at the midpoint of that line.

Later you can delete the line highlighted in red to get the clean drawing.

Once you have the midpoint of the bottom square plane, make the isocircle of radius 1.5 and copy it down to a distance of 1.5 as shown in the following figure.

Now trim and delete the unwanted parts to make the design clearer as shown in the following figure.

Finally, after completing the design, we need to create one more line which connects the top arcs at its quadrants.

To do so Right click on the object snap icon available in the status bar and select the quadrant option.

Now start the line command and join the two quadrants of the circle and trim the unwanted arc as shown in the following figure.

With this final line we will get our complete isometric drawing.

Summary

As you can see making isometric drawing in ZWCAD is almost like making isometric drawings in AutoCAD and you can use the same workflow to make the isometric drawing even if you are using AutoCAD.

I hope this tutorial helped you.

Feel free to share your questions in the comments below.