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AxoTools adds “bottom” projection support

AxoTools bottom projectionIf you adjust the Tilt value of your projections using the dial control to the right of the proxy cube image, you’ve possibly found that it now allows you to tilt far enough to show the bottom of the cube. You could also just enter negative values for the left and right axes, or a negative Tilt value.

When that happens, the projection buttons change their orientation to make sense for the inverted view, including moving the “top” buttons to below the sides for “bottom” projections.

The left and right axes will now both show as negative values.

In this example, how many of you had one of these in your living room growing up? Stereo consoles were quite the rage in 1970, but were replaced with component-style equipment not long afterward. It provides a good example of an underside view, to show the location of the four feet.

stereo view below

In this case, I’ve defined the four zones, which now need to include options for bottom-left and bottom-right zones, as well as bottom reference points. In most cases, you really won’t need to define zones, but if you have large or complex ortho views that you move or extrude by reference, it can save you from some unexpected behavior later.

While revising the Zone tool and zone creation, it seemed a good time to make other improvements to the Zone tool and its functions to make the process easier and more intuitive. Reference points are now visible while the Zone tool is active, and they can be created here now, as well. Rather than draw a rectangle every time, you now have the option of selecting art from an ortho view, and the tool will draw a rectangle to enclose it. Other details are available in the updated documentation for the tool.

To summarize, the Projection panel now supports Tilt and Turn values that show many combinations of the left and right planes, plus the top or bottom.

Now, this may be going kind of crazy, but it would be possible to add the option to project art to a back surface. This might look like a sign painted on a window, but appearing backward as viewed from inside the building. Would that be useful?

AxoTools adds Action support

Now you can record and play back actions that include many AxoTools functions, with the free update to AxoTools available online for Adobe Illustrator CC 2019 through 2023. Actions currently supported include:

  • Project art to or from an axonometric plane
  • Extrude, either from the tool or the panel
  • Axo Scale
  • Axo Rotate
  • Axo Shear
  • Axo Move
  • Axo Rectangle
  • Axo Ellipse

Actions will play back using the current document projection settings. That is, if you recorded moving or extruding an object along an axis of an isometric view, then changed your document’s projection, it would adjust to operate using the current projection. Action playback also honors your current draw settings and Projection panel options so old actions adapt to your current environment.

One example of using actions with AxoTools is a technique to do a block shadow effect (even though AxoTools was never made for that).

  1. Select path art to which you want to add a shadow
  2. Start recording the action
  3. Select Edit > Copy
  4. Extrude the art without projecting it, using either the Extrude panel or Extrude tool
  5. Set the fill and stroke of the extruded and selected art to your shadow color
  6. Select Edit > Paste in Front
  7. Stop recording

Now any time you want to add a similar block shadow, just select your art and run this action!

block shadow action

I’m curious what ingenious actions other AxoTools users will come up with. Maybe one to construct a detailed hex nut? Please let us know in the comments below.

AxoTools gradient shading

Gradient shading

The latest update to AxoTools includes three improvements to shaded fills on extruded art. First, curved paths now have a gradient fill to more accurately show the curvature of the surface.

shaded objects

Second, the lighting is based on the location of a theoretical light source, so surfaces are shaded based on their actual orientation relative to the light, and no longer assigned a simple “top,” “left,” or “right” tint or shade.

Third, the light source is user-definable.

When you extrude a path, its fill color is used as the base color for shading values. For each base color AxoTools uses, it creates a gradient that’s stored in the document’s Swatches panel. To use your own gradient for shade values, just fill your starting object with the gradient and extrude it.

There is also a new panel where you can make adjustments to your light and shading, but it’s important to stress that you don’t ever have to fuss with those controls in order to use the new lighting and shading features. Most of you will probably want to stop reading here and just go download the update!

More for “explorers”

For those other few people in the room who want to take things a notch or two higher, the new panel works in three areas:

  • Gradient colors
  • Light location
  • Lighting properties.

At the top of the panel is a series of five color well widgets that represent the five stops on the shading gradient ramp for your current document color. The gradient itself represents the range of all possible colors to apply to your fills. AxoTools generates a shaded gradient ramp for each fill color you start with when you extrude with the shading option enabled.

gradient ramp

The gradient represents the range of possible tints and shades available based on the angle of the lighting. The first gradient stop represents the lightest highlight color where the light hits it at a 90° angle. Using the default settings, the angle of light on the left isometric plane falls very close to the second stop, which is set to the original color. The third stop represents the shade when the light hits an object on its edge, and stops 4 and 5 represent the rear surfaces, with the last stop showing the effect of backlighting.

The light source’s location is defined with the familiar Tilt and Turn adjustments, which are relative to the viewer. Following these are slider controls for the light intensity, ambient light, and amount of backlighting. As you make adjustments to the lighting properties, the color wells along the top of the panel will preview the results of changes to the intensity, ambient, and backlight lighting properties.

At the bottom right, the “Reset to defaults” button will restore the default settings for all slider controls.

Below the color wells are two buttons relating directly to them. The “Rebuild gradient” button will generate five shades of the current document color.

The “Save gradient” button, I’ll confess, was included for the true “explorers.” If you changed the colors in the color well controls, either by changing lighting properties or using the color pickers in the color wells, this will overwrite the gradient ramp used for the base color.

Please see the online documentation for more information.

I hope you find this new feature useful!

AxoTools Quick Tips videos

Today I released the first in a series of short videos covering topics relating to AxoTools, both using the plugin and doing technical illustration in general. The first video briefly describes different types of projections for the benefit of those who don’t come from a technical illustration background.

The next in the series will cover how to begin an isometric drawing in AxoTools. Other possible topics may include:

  • Using multiple line weights (including dashed break lines for curved surfaces) to suggest form and mass
  • Filling art with white to overlap parts
  • Using flow lines
  • Fill modes and other Draw panel options
  • What is that option to rotate ellipses when projecting?
  • Using the line tool to draw straight lines and to toggle line weights
  • Entering simple equations in text fields, plus auto-entry of measurements
  • Use the Extrude tool to draw a drop shadow (but never for an oblique projection!)
  • What’s the difference between the Transformations panel and Auxiliary projection panel?
  • Using the Measure tool
  • How does Project-in-Place work?
  • What are the Axo Zone tool and Projection Zones for?

If you have other suggestions for short video subjects, please leave a comment below!

AxoTools Qukck Tip: Projections

 

I’d like to thank Ron Kempke, AxoTools’ co-author, as well as Matt Jennings of Industrial Artworks, and Greg Maxson of Greg Maxson Illustration for the use of their illustrations and advice in getting this video series started.

30+ years of isometric drawing in Adobe Illustrator

The process of doing isometric/axonometric drawings in Adobe Illustrator really hasn’t changed much since the mid 1990s, or even since the late 1980s, something I hadn’t fully realized until doing the first AxoTools video. How many of you can relate to this?

Working in Illustrator 88, I would project art to isometric by manually doing the scale-rotate-scale method. When the QuicKeys keyboard macro utility came out, it automated that process and also allowed me to change the constrain angle by pressing an otherwise-unused function key.

In 1994, when Illustrator 5 added support for plugins, I wrote one called Isometric that I shared free on my web site. It added menu items to project art to and from isometric planes, and to create box and cylinder primitives. Does anybody recall using this? I also wrote a free companion plugin Isometric Line Tool to draw straight lines in isometric, which was around quite a while and later merged into AxoTools.

In 1998, Illustrator 8 added recordable Actions, which was easier to maintain than updating the plugin as Illustrator’s API became more complicated. It also added Smart Guides, which I relied on when QuicKeys had compatibility issues with operating system changes.

About this time, Adobe had a simple 3D app called Dimensions (not the same as their current Dimensions product) that exported shapes to a file Illustrator could open. This app was the origin of the “Off Axis” projections I use in my Actions and in the current AxoTools presets. I used Dimensions in my first locomotive cutaway rendering. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. Some of you may use SketchUp in that same way today.

Has anybody found Illustrator CS’s 3D effect actually useful for scale isometric drawings? I had high hopes when it appeared, but it never proved truly useful to me.

Hot Door’s CADtools has had support for isometric for several versions now, and in recent years supports axonometric views. I’ve found CADtools indispensable for technical drawing, but knew there had to be an easier way to assemble the pieces.

So for over 30 years, the process has been to project a shape to an isometric plane, then manually move it into position. This worked OK when one plane served as a sort of floor plan that other shapes could be snapped to, but it didn’t work well for most things I drew, like vehicles, machinery, and electronics. In order to get objects positioned correctly, I often drew a temporary “armature” with projected lines along two or three axes.

I’d actually envisioned today’s AxoTools plugin decades ago, using virtual armatures to position art and tools with custom constraints to move art along any defined axis. Using geometric formulas by Ron Kempke, it became possible to add support for any axonometric projection showing the left, right, and top views. Why it took so long, I’m sorry I can’t answer. I hope you agree that doing axonometric drawing in Adobe Illustrator is significantly easier than ever with AxoTools.