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IsoDraw

An isometric drawing editor, in the browser or on the desktop.

3D blocks snapped to a grid, textures and text on their faces, lines and annotations, all organized in layers.

Open the app · Download · Examples

Features

_{Place a block, then stretch it along each axis with its handles.}

• 3D blocks: place, stretch and stack them on an isometric grid, then move them with per-axis handles.
• Face decorations: each visible face takes an SVG texture (stretched or tiled) and a text, placed on a 3×3 grid.
• Free text: facing the screen, or lying on the floor or a wall, over several lines.
• 3D lines: polylines between 3D points, with arrowheads, dashes or dots. Hold Shift to follow the isometric axes.
• Layers: nested, foldable folders, drag and drop, hiding and locking.
• History: everything can be undone, including a drag or a paste.
• PNG / SVG export: the whole drawing, the current view or the selection, from 1× to 4×, with a choice of background and grid.
• .isodraw files: a readable zip archive that embeds the textures it uses.

Getting started

Web	isodraw.aphelia.fr, nothing to install
Linux	the AppImage from the latest release: works offline and saves straight to disk

To see what the app can do right away, open one of the examples with Ctrl+O: the architecture diagram, the chart and the island from the banner, the office from the screenshot, or the neighborhood.

Shortcuts

Tools		Editing
B / Space	Place a block	Ctrl+Z	Undo
T	Text	Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z	Redo
R	Line	Ctrl+C / X / V	Copy, cut, paste
↑ ↓	Raise or lower the line's plane	Del	Delete
Shift	Draw the line along the iso axes	Esc	Cancel the current action
P	Color and opacity	Ctrl+N	New document
L	Layers panel	Ctrl+O / Ctrl+S	Open, save
G	Grid	Ctrl+Shift+E	Export the image

The mouse wheel zooms, the middle button pans the view, and right-clicking a shape opens its menu.

Languages

The interface is available in English and French. It follows the system (or browser) language, and you can change it in the View menu; the choice is remembered.

To add a language, copy locales/en.ftl to locales/<code>.ftl and translate it, add the variant to Lang in src/i18n/mod.rs, then run cargo test: it reports missing messages and variables.

Development

You need Rust, the wasm32-unknown-unknown target and the Dioxus CLI (dx), at the same version as dioxus in Cargo.lock.

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
dx serve --addr 0.0.0.0             # web, with hot reload
dx serve --desktop                  # desktop app
cargo test                          # tests

On Linux, the desktop app needs WebKitGTK (libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libxdo-dev…).

Code layout

src/
├── main.rs          root component, web / desktop launch
├── state.rs         global state (shapes, layers, selection, history…)
├── commands/        undoable history commands
├── components/      interface: canvas, toolbar, layers, dialogs
├── shapes/          document operations (layers, clipboard, export…)
├── file_format/     reading and writing .isodraw (v1, v2)
├── shortcuts.rs     keyboard shortcuts
└── desktop_menu.rs  native menu bar
docs/                designs, plans, performance measurements (in French)

File format

An .isodraw file is a zip archive:

mimetype            application/x-isodraw (first entry, uncompressed)
document.ron        shapes, layers and asset index, in RON
assets/<sha256>.svg textures, named after the hash of their content

The order of the shape list is the drawing order: the first shape is in front. v1 files (plain RON) still open.

Releasing

A v* tag runs .forgejo/workflows/release.yml, which builds the web version (isodraw-web.tar.gz, deployed automatically) and the AppImage, then attaches them to the release.

git tag v2026-10-01 && git push --tags

Further reading

• TODO.md: user feedback and upcoming features.
• docs/perf.md: performance measurements; dragging among 3,000 shapes went from 350 to 6 ms.
• docs/: the design and plan of each feature.

The project documentation is written in French.

AI usage

IsoDraw is a hobby and experimentation project, developed largely with AI coding assistants (Claude, by Anthropic). Commits where an assistant contributed are marked with a Co-Authored-By trailer. The maintainer tests the app regularly, but not every change is reviewed or tested thoroughly, so expect some rough edges and bugs, and keep backups of your drawings.

Contributions are welcome, with or without AI assistance. If you used an AI tool, please mention it in your pull request. Everything is released under the project's license (AGPL-3.0-or-later).

License

IsoDraw is licensed under the GNU AGPL v3 or later.