Master the process of drawing window geometry in AutoCAD with this straightforward guide. Learn techniques like setting the current layer to A Glaze, using the line tool, and extending lines to ensure window dimensions are accurate.
Key Insights
- The window geometry is drawn on the A Glaze layer in AutoCAD. This involves drawing one window in the horizontal orientation and another in the vertical orientation.
- Copying lines to other window openings and using the extend tool to adjust them for the correct distance is a crucial part of the process. This ensures the windows are accurate for their respective orientations.
- Using the draw order function to arrange the geometry in terms of importance can enhance the clarity of the drawing. In this case, the wall geometry is deemed more important and so is placed above the window geometry.
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In this video, we are going to draw our window geometry, which is on the A Glaze layer. So I'm going to go to my layer dropdown.
I'm going to change our current layer to A Glaze, A-G-L-A-Z. And I want to draw one window in the horizontal orientation and in the vertical orientation. I also want to make sure that this window is relatively short, or at least as short as all of the window openings in our drawing.
Now, we just made our window openings, so we can remember that our windows are no smaller than two feet wide. And in this corner of the building has both a two feet in the horizontal and two feet in the vertical direction for both windows. We're going to use the same window representation that we did in our previous course, which is three horizontal lines.
So I'm going to go to the line tool. I have my running object snaps on with endpoint and midpoint. And I'll pick this endpoint and go to this endpoint.
Enter to say I'm done. Enter to go back in. I'll go midpoint to midpoint.
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Enter to say I'm done. Enter to go back in. And endpoint to endpoint.
I'll do the same on this window. Endpoint to endpoint. Enter, enter.
Midpoint to midpoint. Enter, enter. And point to endpoint.
Enter to say that I'm done. Now that we've drawn two of our windows, we can copy these three lines to our other window openings and then use the extend tool to make them the correct distance. I'll start with the horizontal orientation windows.
I'll go copy. It says select objects. I'll pick all three with a crossing window.
Enter to lock it in. My base point will be any of the points on this window. I just want to make sure it lines up with the windows in the other orientations.
So I'll choose top left. And I'll go around and click the top left point on each of my window openings. Two there.
One at the top of my drawing here. And then two down here. And again, this is top left, so on these windows, it's the interior edge of the wall.
I'll hit ENTER to say that I'm done. Control S to save. Now I can copy around this part of the window.
So I'll go copy. Select these three lines with a crossing window. Enter to lock it in.
I'll do top left again. That's just easy to remember. And this time, I'll do top left of all of the vertical facing openings.
Those two there. The bathroom window. And this window here.
Enter to say I'm done. Zoom extents. Now only these three windows are exactly the right size.
The rest, the geometry is too small. Now we used stretch in the previous courses for this operation. But in this case, we can just use extend.
So I'll go to the extend tool. And I can come down in. And with a fence, I can select all three end points.
So I'll click on the outside. Move my mouse across and click. And I'll do that on the horizontal and vertical.
Start with my fence outside. Cross my lines and click. Start outside.
Cross my lines and click. There we go. I'll do that on every single window around my drawing.
Enter to say I'm done. Zoom extents. And Control S to save.
All right, there we go. Now all of our window openings are done. And our window geometry is drawn.
Now depending on the layers you're using and your color table file, you want to make sure that the most important geometry is above the less important geometry. In this case, all of these lines will plot in a black color. But in a lot of drawings, your window geometry or other geometry might be a different color.
In this case, the wall geometry is more important. So you might remember in previous courses, we used draw order to send some geometry to the back of the drawing. In this case, we could select one of our blue lines, right click, select similar.
That will select all of my window line geometry. And then right click on the screen, draw order, send to back. Nothing looks like it's changed on the screen too much right now.
But now all of the yellow wall lines are at the very top of the draw order. And the window lines, the glazing lines, are at the back of the draw order. This might be very useful for some workflows in your office.
So just remember, if you're ever printing and something's on top when it's not supposed to be, use draw order and send it to the back. All right, Zoom Extents, Control S to save. And in the next video, we will begin with our door openings.
I'll see you there.
