About a year ago I started working on a few graphics using Adobe Illustrator that I wanted to obey an isometric perspective. At the time I Googled for a solution on creating custom grids in Adobe Illustrator, and after finding no such luck without purchasing relatively expensive plugins like CADtools, I opted for what seemed like the rather primitive solution of using a drawn isometric pattern in a layer beneath my artwork as a basis for working.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I returned to the problem and built a slightly more feasible solution. Sadly, no such luck working with custom grids, but instead I’ve setup an isometric pattern using paths and converted them to guides.

Now, I won’t say that this is by any means a fool-proof solution, in fact quite the opposite: it can be quite time consuming to use and can be quite error prone too. However, it does give a LOT more accuracy than any other method I could find without added expense.

You can download a copy of my template file here:
A3 Landscape Isometric Grid / Guides – Adobe Illustrator CS2

To use, you’ll need to Show Guides, and ideally turn on Smart Guides. This will help by telling you when you’re hovering over an intersect rather than just a single path. Also, consider adjusting snapping tolerance for guides (see ‘Smart Guides & Slices’ in Preferences) to speed up your work flow.

Hopefully this is of some use to other Illy users out there, but I’d love to hear any other solutions you may have. I do seem to remember Freehand having an iso grid built in? But I may be daydreaming.

If you have downloaded this template and made something nice with it – I’d love to hear from you and will happily link to your work, so why not either contact me or leave a comment here (below) with a link?

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