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IsoDraw provides tools that will enable you to easily add hard contours for hoses and tubes. A detailed explanation and example follows.
The quickest way to create hard contours, adding a more realistic look to tubes and hoses, is to use the "Drawing of parallel paths on both sides" tool. This tool exists in the Palette window under the "Drawing of parallel paths" tool  .
To create a tube, start with a Bezier or polyline denoting the tubes centreline. With this centreline selected, utilize the "Drawing of parallel paths on both sides tool". The tool can be used by click-dragging the centerline. Alternatively you can hold shift and click the drawing space while the centreline is selected to bring up a dialog for this command.
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Figure 1) Bezier before parallel paths |
Figure 2) Bezier(s) after parallel paths |
After the parallel paths have been created, the beginnings of a realistic tube begin to take shape. The next step might be to close off the ends with ellipses. We recommend using the "Drawing of ellipses along diameter"  tool in order to drag an ellipse from one Bezier endpoint to the corresponding end of the parallel Bezier.
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Figure 3) Tube after the creation of ellipses
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The final step is the removal of one of the crease lines for each bend. Although the Beziers do not look continuous they in fact are. A "No pen" line connects the endpoints of each of the crease lines creating a continuous Bezier.
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| Figure 4) Tube with Preview mode disabled, showing the No Pen lines |
Rather than trimming these Beziers into two or more separate lines, we will simply change the pen for the undesired crease lines to No Pen. To do this, we must first ensure that portion of the Bezier is an individual, selectable segment. This can be ensured by adding a new control point to the Bezier thereby creating a new segment. A new control point is added by selecting the Bezier tool and Shift + clicking the Bezier at the location of the new control point.
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| Figure 5) Bezier before adding control point |
Figure 6) Bezier with new control point |
With this new control point, the new segment representing the undesired portion of the Bezier can be selected by Alt + clicking it while the select arrow is chosen. This will select only the specific segment, not the entire Bezier. Finally, the No Pen can be assigned to this segment from the Attribute window.
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