Ateneo de Zamboanga University

Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City

College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

LESSON 13: THREE DIMENSIONS DRAWING

The 3D Coordinate System

By now you should be comfortable working your way around the XY coordinate system.
Anyway, here is a quick review. Looking from the plan view, this is what you see to figure out where
is positive X and positive Y.

If you were to look at the same picture, but at a slight angle, you would see the third axis. This
new axis is called the Z-axis. Imagine that the positive Z-axis is coming towards you out of the monitor.

When you entered points previously, you would enter them in the format: X,Y. By doing this, you let
AutoCAD know that in these cases, Z was equal to zero. Entering 4,3 would be the same as entering
4,3,0. Now if you drew a line from the origin (0,0,0) to a point at 4,3,2, you would get a line that goes
4 units to the right, 3 units up and 2 units towards you. The properties of this line would be this:

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 Ateneo de Zamboanga University
Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City
College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

Notice that the line is 5.3852 units long. If you were to look at it from the plan view, it would
look like exactly a line drawn from 0,0 to 4,3. Draw a line from 0,0 to 4,3 and then compare the
properties.

3D ROTATION
You already know how to rotate 2D objects, but you also must know how AutoCAD measures
angles of rotation in 3D. There is a somewhat simple rule for this called, “The Right Hand Rule”. To
figure out which is the positive rotation angle, imagine that you are wrapping your right hand around
the axis with your thumb towards the positive end. The direction that your fingers are wrapped is the
positive rotation. This applies to all three axes.

Direction of positive rotation using the right-hand rule. The main point of this lesson is to tell
you that objects can trick you in 3D space. Shortcuts don’t always work, you have to be careful with
Osnaps and your drawing can turn into a mess very quickly if you are not paying attention.

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 Ateneo de Zamboanga University
Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City
College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

VIEWING 3D OBJECTS
AutoCAD has a few ways for you to view an object other than the plan view that you have
used for your 2D drawings.

Note: Now is a good time to change into the 3D Basics Workspace. Click the “gear” icon on the status
bar and select “3D Basics”.

When you are in the 3D Basics workspace, your tool palettes on the ribbon will change. This
will make it easier to find tools and icons that you’ll use more often in 3D.

The first one we’ll look is the Visuallize Palette.

This is the quickest way to learn the different views, but for now this is the fastest and clearest
way to see different views of your AutoCAD objects in 3D.

Open this DWG file and then we will look at it from a few different angles.

When you first open it, you'll see the drawing from the plan (top) view looking straight down
the Z axis towards the origin. You'll see the X axis in its familiar location with positive to the right and
the positive Y axis pointing up.

Using the Visualize tools shown above, select the Bottom View. You'll now be looking up from
the Negative Z axis towards the origin.

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 Ateneo de Zamboanga University
Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City
College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

Notice how the Positive X axis is now pointing to the left? And it's backwards? You're looking
UP now instead of DOWN. It's simple to see in this example, but what if you were looking at a cube?
(It would look the same from top or bottom.) Have a look at your UCS Icon - check its orientation,
because even if you view changes, your UCS / WCS doesn't necessarily change with it. This is REALLY
important to pay attention to when you start drafting in 3D.

Try a few other views from this list like the SW Isometric view, then return to the Top view.

TILED VIEWPORTS
Tiled viewports let you divide up the screen into rectangular bounding boxes. You can then
show a different view of your drawing in each viewport. The purpose of tiled viewports is to make it
easier to draw. You can see the whole drawing in one viewport and a zoomed in portion of that
drawing in another viewport and you can see widely separated views of a large drawing at one time.

There will be times when you may need to see around to the other side of your object. Then
you can easily use the other preset views to see your model. You can also have more than one view
on your screen at a time.

To achieve this, use the Viewport Configuration -> option of the Visualize tool palette and
select the "Four: Left" option. Any view or viewport configuration can be saved under a unique name.
Later you can easily restore this view when needed. Here are the preset viewport configurations that
you can use in model space.

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 Ateneo de Zamboanga University
Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City
College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

Change the view by picking in one of the viewports and selecting a new view in the droplist.
See if you can get this same configuration in your drawing.

Here are a few general notes about views and viewports:

 You can have viewports in either model space (tiled) or paper space (floating).
 They can have different zoom ratios.
 There is a difference between views and viewports.
 If you go to a lot of work to get a view you need, save it using the VIEW command.
 When saving a view, give it a descriptive name.
 Keep an eye on the UCS icon in the corner of the screen or viewport.
 The smaller your monitor is, the harder it is to see tiled viewports.
 When you have more than one viewport, click inside the one you want active.

Change back to a single tiled viewport and go to the top view. On the right your screen you
should see the "View Cube" This is a quick tool that lets you change your view with a click or two using
a visual cube for reference and orientation.

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 Ateneo de Zamboanga University
Fr Eusebio, SJ Campus, La Purisima St., Zamboanga City
College of Science and Information Technology
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

To use the View Cube, you can click on different sections of the cube or on the directional
letters. You can also select a corner of the View Cube to change to isometric views. In the example
below, the highlighted corner will give you the SW Isometric view.

If this is confusing, that's understandable, but notice how the highlighted corner is between
the W (West) and S (South) views? Click around on the cube and see if the views you get are what you
are expecting. Once again, it will take a while to be comfortable viewing in a 3D world (on a 2D
monitor).

You can use 3DORBIT or DVIEW command to spin the objects and view how it looks from different
angles.

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