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I need a program to make a 3D drawing easy and carefully at a half of a day.

3D drawing consists of:

1 vectors,

2 lines,

3 arcs for angle between two vectors or lines vector,

4 vector, line, arc labels.

Label requirements:

1 Greek symbols (phi, alpha, theta, ...)

2 showing a fraction ability (phi/2)

3 font style such as italic, bold, ...

I need to insert this drawing in my paper, but it will be great if an editor allow to watch the image in 3D.

itun
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    Draw as in - create a drawing, or draw as in - part of some program or application. If the former, then take a CAD program. – Rook Feb 27 '12 at 00:20
  • I meant draw as creation a drawing for a document. – itun Feb 27 '12 at 00:36
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    @itun What would be *really* helpful is a link to a sample figure that you're trying to generate. – fideli Feb 27 '12 at 02:05
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    itun - Then just drawing it a CAD program would be much simpler. Of course, it depends on what you want to do ... like @fideli said, it would be beneficial if you could provide a (hand drawn if nothing else) example ... – Rook Feb 27 '12 at 05:42
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    Given that you need Greek symbols and fractions, I'll assume you're plotting functions in 3D - in which case, you'll find [gnuplot](http://www.gnuplot.info/) quite useful! – Breakthrough Mar 05 '12 at 13:38

5 Answers5

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If you don't mind doing some programming, I would consider Sketch. It provides a nice high-level programming language that can be used to generate TikZ code that you can directly compile into a PDF or a vector graphics file.

Since it's designed to interoperate with LaTeX, it will also give you the ability to include Greek letters and mathematical symbols in your 3D drawings (this was part of the requirements of the question)

You can see some examples here. Here is an example from their website:

            enter image description here

Amelio Vazquez-Reina
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  • I tried this: http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/the-3dplot-package/. And It works awful for me, because it is a drawing for a particular situation. It is not full of 3D graphics operations. And the code is terrible. – itun Feb 29 '12 at 15:49
  • @itun, what do you mean by "its not full of 3D graphics operations"? The language provides a set of primitives that you can use to draw a wide range of 3D objects. Why did you find the code terrible? – Amelio Vazquez-Reina Feb 29 '12 at 15:56
  • How I said the language is not appropriate for this task, it is complex. These methods are not flexible. – itun Feb 29 '12 at 16:04
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A very easy 3D sketching tool is Google SketchUp.

"SketchUp is the finest (and most innovative) tool available for anyone designing anything from coffee pots to skyscrapers." – McCall & Associates

enter image description here

Community
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harrymc
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Continuing the Open Source tradition established in the present answers and comments, I'll hereby suggest the vector graphics editor Inkscape:

enter image description here

It will definitely do what you want, and the many features should make the learning curve worthwhile to climb - here's an Inkscape tutorial for 3D.

EDIT: for Greek letters, maybe you'll need to type the Unicodes [PDF] by first typing Ctrl+U.

trolle3000
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You need Math illustrations. They are in 2D now but for the feature...In Math illustrations you can create constrained sketch like in Solidworks.So you don't need static snaps like in old Autocad,Adobe Illustartor,Inkscape and many other stupid modern programs wich don`t create and keep relations between objects.

Igor Fomenko
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  • Where can this software be obtained? Can you show an example of its capabilities? – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' Jul 29 '17 at 09:43
  • This software can be obtained on www.mathillustrations.com. Also they have a little more sophisticated software named geometryexpressions (with symbolic geometric calculations). You can find it on www.geometryexpressions.com – Igor Fomenko Jul 31 '17 at 18:08
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If you don't mind a little bit of Python programming: VPython.

cYrus
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  • I cannot find a tutorial to solve my task. Can u show me? – itun Feb 27 '12 at 00:05
  • I just saw [your comment](http://superuser.com/questions/394327/draw-3d-vectors#comment446594_394327), well, I guess that VPython is more suitable for interactive graphics. Maybe you should take a look at [Asymptote](http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/); some examples [here](http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/). – cYrus Feb 27 '12 at 01:05
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    @cYrus sticking with the Python idea, I would suggest [matplotlib](http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/). – fideli Feb 27 '12 at 02:05