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Objective

To learn to draft precise architectural drawings.

Exercise

1.Start a new drawing in AutoCAD.

2.Setup the drawing to use appropriate units, drawing limits, grid, snap and other modes.

These settings will have to accommodate the first floor of a small house, condo or apartment, drawn in full scale.

  1. Draw a floor plan. An example is shown above.

Use the floor plan submitted in the first assignment. Do not draft the above example.

Note that the OFFSET, BREAK, EXTEND, TRIM, COPY, ROTATE, and MOVE commands will all prove useful for drawing the plan. Remember to save your work often.

Do not add doors, windows, furniture, or plumbing fixtures to the drawing for this assignment. We will provide a library of such symbols later. You should, however, leave gaps in the walls like the ones shown in the figure for inserting doors and windows later. Openings for doors should be 32”, 36”, 48”, 60” or 72”. Openings for windows should be 30”, 36”, or 48”. The walls containing doors or windows need to be exactly 4”, 6”, 8” or 12” thick.

4.Load and define a new text style as shown in the lecture, and label each room with names and with approximate width and length dimensions.

Also indicate your name in the lower right hand corner of the drawing. Do not use the default “STANDARD” text style.

  1. Create a tile to use for the patio. Plot the tile pattern on a separate sheet. Use the ARRAY and COPY commands to cover an area with this tiling pattern. Plot a single tile at a large scale (“Scale to fit” is fine).

If you choose to use a rectangular array, you will also need to indicate the spacing between the rows and columns in the array. Note that “spacing” is not the gap between the right side of one cell and the left side of the next; it is the distance between the places where the pattern repeats. Tiles that are supposed to touch each other should have a spacing equal to the width (and length) of the tile.

You may need to use the ERASE and TRIM commands to edit tiles near the edges of the patio.

6.Make the patio blocks a thin line (.000” will default to the thinnest line), the text a little wider (~.006, or the same as the patio blocks) and the wall lines slightly wider (~.014).

Use the “Lineweight Control” pull down menu from the Object Properties toolbar. Select the objects you wish to make the same line weight and then choose the new width. Make sure that the “LWT” button is toggled on in the Status Bar to preview the affect. Large values for line weight will show on the display as very wide lines. Plot the drawing after assigning weights to make sure they are correct.

7.Plot the finished floor plan.

Plot at a standard architectural scale, like 1/4” = 1’ or 1/8” = 1’. Use either 8.5”x11” or 11”x17” paper.

Do a full plot preview of the drawing to verify that all of your settings are correct. Correct any plotter setup problems and plot the drawing.

Add no embellishments to this drawing.

  1. Embellishment.

For extra points, use two tile patterns, perhaps alternating the tiles; or two patios; or use a tile pattern for the floor in the kitchen or bathroom. (Use the default “thinnest” line weight for floor tiles – “0.00”.) Plot the drawing with embellishments on a separate sheet. Also, draft a plan view of a piece of furniture (chair, table, …) and copy it to at least two different locations (say, two chairs in the living room). Drawing a second floor plan can also be done for extra points. In all cases, the extra items must be of at least medium complexity and must be drawn accurately.

You may also attempt to define your own crosshatch pattern. See the attached directions from AutoCAD’s help files. Create a tile to use for the patio.

Plot the tile pattern on a separate sheet

Plot the finished floor plan. Plot at either 1/4” = 1’-0” or 1/8” = 1’-0”.

Plot the drawing with embellishments.

CAD Fundamentals IFloor PlanAutoCAD