draw in rhino + make2d command=done

hidden line. rhino/autocad/formz/all similar simple ways of doing this.

Take a wireframe view and trim each line to appear hidden. This should only take 58 hours for a view like Mr. Allen's.

But seriously, Rhino does a great job. I like formZ's shaded version, though if you bring it into Illustrator or Freehand you'll find tons of solid polygons on top of each other. With formZ you get each and every surface flattened and literally hidden under the surface before it. Wow, I haven't touched formZ in 3 years.

Stay away from Penguin (in Rhino). It's fake hidden line a la raster images.

In AutoCAD, simply set up the view you want, and then type "HIDE" and press enter. Easy as cake.

It's a little more complicated if you have curved surfaces (AutoCAD shows them as segmented flat surfaces), but you can either Photoshop out the segmented lines or choose a shaded/rendered view.

... or you can set the DISPSILH variable to hide those segmented lines + INTERSECTIONDISPLAY to also render intersections of surfaces.

in autocad, set a camera to get a real perspective (type CAMERA) and then under properties, make sure it plots
then plot with Hidden display

much easier in rhino though

ok i got it, thanks everyone!

this is what i did in AutoCAD:

1. highlighted/selected my camera perspective view viewport
2. went to page set up and check-marked hide objects under Plot Options.
3. increased the viewres and facetres for smooth lines
4. Plotted a pdf file of the perspective view with my pdfwriter

and now i have a simple line drawing perspective pic.

some vertical lines could be smoother/straighter but i guess i'll play around some more.

you mean it becomes a rasterized drawing?

yes you get a rasterized drawing

and you can increase the quality to get smoother lines.

I opened the pdf in illustrator to delete the lines of the faces on cylinders and the lineweights increased. hmm.

pdf from autocad 2006 opened as vector file in Illustrator cs2

create a local "Autocad DXB file" printer. once the file is created. open a new file type "dxbin". Scale if needed.

(plot dxb then dxbin) works good but this works great : import ur cad file in sketchup as 3dmodel , export it in 2dmodel as dwg file