Planometric — where it appears
Named by 3 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.
Any three lines you draw are a cube
This site has said, for four rungs, that cavalier projection is not the projection of anything — because its axis scales sum to three where every orthographic projection sums to two. That is true of orthographic projection and false of projection. Three lines from a point, drawn by hand, are a picture of an actual cube seen from an actual direction, and the cube and the direction come out of the drawing in closed form.
Oblique is a shear, and the shear is the whole system
Cavalier and cabinet are usually introduced as easy perspective for people with a set square. They are not a simplification of anything — they are the answer to a demand no orthographic projection can meet, which is a front face at true size and a depth axis at full length at the same time. The two are locked on a unit circle, and buying both costs exactly 45° of obliquity.
A ruler on an isometric drawing
Isometric drawing has one scale — 0.8165 — and every account of it stops there. But that number is about three directions and a drawing has infinitely many, so a length measured off the paper and divided by 0.8165 comes back anywhere between √(1/2) and √(3/2) of the truth: 29.3% short to 22.5% long, with nothing in the picture to say which.
Named alongside it
The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.
Drawing systemOblique projectionOrthographicAnisotropyAxonometricForeshorteningParallel projectionPohlkeDemonstrationDepth reversalFour centre ellipseFree parameter