For some time now, an axonometric measurement tool has been planned. The hardest part, fortunately, is settling on a UI. Maybe it could measure distances at any angle between two points, assuming it’s on the horizontal or ground plane, or Alt/Option drag for vertical measurements. Perhaps it could work like the AxoRotate tool, which displays an icon to indicate the current plane, which gets toggled by pressing the Alt/Option key. I hesitate to use different modifier keys to choose different planes, as that could get messy and difficult for users to memorize — nor should users be required to memorize things like that. Similar to the eyedropper tool, you could alt-click on a path segment to capture the distance and angle between its anchor points.
To measure a distance, users could click and drag, or click in two locations. To measure an angle, click once to set an anchor point, then click and drag at a second location for the rotation.
Rather than defining the plane at the time the measurement is taken, what if a panel displayed distance and angle values for each of the three planes? It could show ortho values projected to axo, as well as axo values converted back to ortho. It could show all possible values, or buttons could filter the view to show only axo or ortho, only one of the three planes, or both. It could be less intimidating to have fewer values shown, but requires more busywork for the user to select which values.
To calculate an auxiliary projection, one only needs to measure or identify one path segment that deviates from the view’s three axes. If both axes differ from the current axonometric view, it’s still possible, we can address that later. A button on a panel could project selected art to that projection, or to one of its adjacent planes.
A menu could be used to store and retrieve auxiliary projections to be used later, and this same menu could be used in the Transformations panel.
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