Adding Building Section Indicators in CAD: Annotative Symbols and Drawing Details Explained

Let's continue adding some more details into our drawing. The next thing I'd like to do is to put in the indicators for the building sections. So, I'm on my Annotative Symbols layer, which is correct.

I'm going to go Insert, Block Insert, go to Browse. I'm going to choose 01090A05. I'm going to go Open.

I'm saying Specify Insertion Point on Screen. I will give it a Scale Factor of 96. And I will go OK.

It's saying it's already in the drawing. Do I want to redefine it? I'm going to say Yes. And I will place the symbol right here.

Now, you can see, looking at the Command Prompt, it is saying what's the drawing label going to be. Now, if you look at the handout, you can see that we are referencing image 1 on sheet A4.1. So, my drawing label will be Label 1, the sheet number A4.1. I'm going to hit ENTER. So, I'm showing right now the detail image, but I need to show the direction in which the cut is being placed.

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So, I'm going to go Insert, Block, go over to Browse, and I will choose 01090C05. I'm going to say Open. Specify Insertion Point on Screen.

Specify a Scale Factor of 96. And I'm going to say Specify the Rotation Angle on Screen. And go OK.

So, you can see that my drawing is being brought in from its base point. So, I can say pop it in at either the center or the insertion base point of this symbol. And now it's asking me which way I want to have it rotated.

You can see my ghosting line going around. And I'm going to make it so it goes to the left, CTRL S to save. I'm going to have another continuation of the building section up here and down here.

But what I'm going to do next is I'm going to turn on our wall layer so I can appropriately position not only the building section indicators but also the polyline that will show it where it's going to go. So, I'll go to Home tab. I will go to Layers.

And I will turn on my A-Wall layer. So, you can see what's happening there. Now, what's going to go on is we're going to have our building section cut, go through the living room, and then it will turn, go through the laundry, and come out at the garage.

So, here's what I'm going to do first. I'm going to draw a polyline and I will start off at the quadrant of the symbol. And I'm going to go straight down with Ortho on and I will pick I'll drag my hand over to the right and I will come down to there.

Control-S to save. I don't know that I'm overly excited about where this specific section symbol is because you can see that I'm cutting through that wall. And what I believe I would rather do is to go on and cut through a window.

So, if I were to say what's the distance? I'm just typing in D-I from this point to that point. I'm just eyeballing it. You can see that it's right around 2'4".

I'm going to choose Stretch Crossing. Enter. Arbitrary Point.

Ortho is on. Type in 2'4". Enter.

So, I brought this over 2'4". I'm going to pick on the polyline, pick on the grip, drag it to the left 2'4". Enter.

So, you can see now that I have created a polyline that's going to go through the window, which is a really good thing. And now I'm going to go through the space in the living and dining room and carry myself on down. Now, one of the next things I'm wondering though is where is this symbol relative to the edge of the building but also relative to the no-plot view space that we have available.

So, I'm going to go on and turn on my no-plot layer. And you can see that if I zoom out, these outermost five lines are indicating the available space that I have. So, I'm going to pull it up so that the top point of this goes to not the original 2'3", to my fourth line right here.

So, I'm going to say Stretch Crossing from the end of the symbol. And I'm going to say perpendicular to not original 2'3", my fourth line right there. So, I have it spaced out that far there.

I'm now going to copy the symbol. I'm going to say from the end of this line, end of the top of the hat, I'm going to copy it down to the end of the polyline here. Hit Escape.

And once again, I want to have it spaced as far on the bottom as I have it on the top. So, again, I have original 2'3", 4. So, I will go Stretch Crossing. Enter.

From the end of the symbol. And I will say perpendicular to original 2'3", 4. Control-S to save. So, what we've done so far is we have equally spaced our building section cut at the same distance outside of the building.

Now, what we normally do is we want to give these polylines some thickness so that they can be read very clearly as being a building section. So, I'm going to pick on the polyline, do a right button, go to Polyline, and I will go to the Edit Properties. And I can go here, or I can slide down and choose Width.

And I will give it a width factor of 3". Escape. Control-S to save.

So, we've now given the polyline a thickness. But, what I want to do now is I want to break parts of the polyline so that it doesn't read all the way through. So, I'm going to draw a line from the end of the polyline, or go on to the left, and I'm going to move the last line up 2'.

And then I'm going to draw another line from the end of here, over, and move that last item down 24". And then I'm going to move this item to there. Move this item to there.

So, you're getting ready to see I'm going to be using these lines for my trim edges. I'm going to draw a line from the intersection of here, over, and I will move the last item down 48". And move the last to the left.

I will draw a line from, let's see, we chose the outside of the overhang here. I'll choose the same thing here and move last up 48". And then move this to the left.

Control-S to save. Now it's time to do trim. So, I will go to Trim and I will choose those four lines as my cutting lines.

Zoom in. Enter. And then I pick on the parts of the polyline I want to disappear.

Now, I'm going to pick here in the middle. And we lucked out. Because the width of the polyline relative to my pick box is letting me pick the polyline.

Normally when you pick a polyline you need to pick on the edge of the polyline. So, what we have happening is we have a building section that comes here. It will continue.

It will shift in this area and go down to there. So, Control-S to save. I now want to erase those trim lines and so I will go erase and I will type in a P, Enter for Previous, because those four entities were the previous selection sets that I used for my trim.

Control-S to save. I now want to work on a horizontal building section. So, I'm going to say Copy.

I'm going to put a window around here. You can see that I've gotten part of the wall. So, R, Enter for Remove.

And I remove that from the selection set. And I'm going to copy this symbol from here, take Ortho off and I will put it there. Escape.

Control-S to save. Now, when we work with the building section labels, we always want the text to be oriented like you see them on the screen, in that they're reading left to right. But the cut, the angle of the cut, the hat, is going to rotate.

So, I'm going to choose Rotate. And I will select the hat and the polyline. I will rotate it about the insertion point of the symbol.

Put Ortho on. And pick. So, now I need to position this so that I can tell what I'm going to be cutting through.

Well, I'm going to have the section looking vertically. And I believe what I'd like to do is to cut through the closet, the living room, and go into the family room. So, I'm going to begin by moving, M, Enter for Move, crossing from that point.

I'm taking Osnap and Ortho off. And I'm going to put it right there. Control-S to save.

Now, I'm going to double-click on the attribute and give it a drawing label value of 2 because this building section will be on our A4.1 sheet, which is a drawing that we will continue in CAD 302. So, that's where the cut's going to be. I'm also going to copy Crossing, Enter to say I'm done, from here.

Put Ortho on. And copy it across the way. Escape.

And then I'm going to mirror. So, I would go Mirror, choose the polyline from the insertion base point of the symbol, straight down. And now it's saying Array Source Objects Yes or No.

I'm going to type in Y for Yes because I only want the one on the right to be. Now, when we were positioning these symbols, we were using our No Plot View for positioning. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to use my gutter line as my offset.

So, I'm going to take the gutter line and I will offset it and use it for the positioning of the building section cuts on the right and the left. So, I'm going to go into Offset. And it's saying what's the distance and I'm going to show it.

I will say the offset distance goes from the intersection of the gutter and the polyline to the quadrant of the symbol. And then it says select the object. I choose the gutter and it says what side and I will pick up Escape, CTRL S to save.

So, now I have information that will tell me how much I want to move this. So, I will go Move. I'm going to do a crossing and I pick the polyline, Enter, zoom in from the quadrant over here perpendicular to the line that we just offset.

So, now I have that symbol the same distance away from the house that I have the verticals. Similarly, I'm going to say Move, Crossing, Enter from the quadrant of the symbol perpendicular to the line that we just offset. And then I'm going to erase out that line.

Zoom Extents, Zoom Realtime, and save the file. I'm now going to go back into our A301 drawing and I will reload the XRef so you can see that my balloon notification is not popping up automatically. But down here in the access bar, you can see the Manage XRefs has the yellow triangle.

So, I will do a right button, reload XRefs, CTRL S to save. Now, you might be wondering why isn't the drafting information that we've added showing up. The reason it's not showing up is that when we initially XRefed our model file into this sheet file, we had the annotated symbols 96 layer turned off.

So, I'm going to go to layers and I'm going to take the annotated symbols 96 layer and turn it on, CTRL S to save and now we have our building section indicators in the drawing. What we will be doing next are the keynotes and I think what we may even do before we put the keynotes in is to actually start working on our keynote list itself. So, have fun with this and that's what we're going to do.

We're going to go on and do our keynotes next.