Gain valuable insights into creating door and window openings in AutoCAD with this informative article. Learn about the nuances of using the extend and trim options, as well as the significance of establishing accurate cutting edges.
Key Insights
- The extend and trim options in AutoCAD are highly valuable for creating window and door openings. They allow you to cut or expand geometry at cutting edges, thus simplifying the process.
- Establishing cutting edges accurately is crucial when using the extend and trim options. This ensures that you don’t leave unnecessary geometry behind, which could affect the overall design.
- While creating door and window openings, it's always safer to go back to the source as much as possible instead of chaining offsets together. This approach minimizes the potential for errors that could disrupt the entire drawing.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we will add our window and door openings. Please make sure you're referencing your handout to see the locations of these objects.
Let's start with the windows, and once again we're going to start with the bathroom window here. Remember our three inch jam typical means that when there's not a dimension next to one of these objects it will have a three inch space, which is the width of two standard construction or wall studs. So let's do our first offset of three enter for our typical jam.
I'll take this line, go to the right and click, enter to say I'm done, enter to go back in, and our next distance is two feet, enter. Take this line to the right and click, enter to say I'm done. Now in the last course we moved these lines through the window using polar or ortho and then we trimmed up our geometry.
I'm going to undo that. In this course I'd like to introduce the extend and trim options. You'll notice that trim and extend are combined into one category in one drop down.
This is because they work very similarly. They either cut geometry at a cutting edge or extend geometry to an edge, which in this case we could also define rather loosely as a cutting edge. When I activate the trim command we can see that in my command prompt it says select object to trim or shift select to extend.
Learn AutoCAD
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
What does that mean? It means that when I hold shift and hover over an object it will switch mid command and act as though it was the extend command. So let's see that. If I force the extend command first I could easily extend one, two, so that they are now perfectly aligned with that outer edge.
Then I could switch to trim one, two, three, four. I did not have to activate the move command at all, which is really great. I didn't worry about setting ortho or polar or my lines could have gotten messed up.
In this case extend and trim were the only tool were the only two tools that I needed. Let me undo and undo. And now using just trim and shift select I will shift to extend and shift to extend.
I'll release shift and click click. Enter to say that I'm done. In one trim command using my modifier key, which is shift, I was able to trim and extend all of the geometry I needed.
Let's keep going with our windows. I'll come over to this window space here and I can see that it is an offset of one feet six inches from this outer edge up and then the window is four feet wide. I'll go to the offset tool.
This is offset distance is one feet six. Enter. I'll choose this edge and go up.
Click enter to say I'm done. Enter to go back in four feet. Enter this edge up and click enter to say that I'm done.
In this case I do want to use trim again, but remember I need to make sure that I have my cutting edges selected so I don't leave geometry over here. So I will go trim. T enter to set my cutting edges and I will choose all of these with a crossing window.
Enter to lock it in. One thing you might want to consider is using the fence lasso for this workflow. I know that I can pick on my geometry one at a time.
I know that I can click to activate a straight line fence, but I can also click and drag and clicking and dragging creates a lasso fence. Every bit of geometry that I cross will be included in the selection set and when I'm using trim will be trimmed away. I know I did that quickly.
Let me do it again. Trim. First thing I want to do is select my cutting edges.
T enter. I'll pick these with a crossing window that's right to left. Enter to lock in those four edges as my cutting edges.
Now I will use my fence, but I'll use the lasso by clicking and dragging on the screen. I'll start anywhere and making sure to only cross the lines I want to get rid of. I can create a lasso shape.
Releasing my mouse button will activate the selection set and I can hit ENTER to say that I am done. Control S to save. Now we know we have a door here that is three inches away from this jam, but we also can see on the handout that it is one feet, one inch, and a quarter inches from this line segment we just made.
In some cases, I would offset this line up and up to create my door width. That is a very tempting thing to do in AutoCAD, but I would not suggest it for many workflows. Remember, we are always building off the geometry we have used in previous workflows, but it is always safer to go back to the source as much as possible.
This edge here was created after multiple offsets, while this edge here was created using one of our first workflows in this course. So this is the more reliable geometry in this case. Sometimes it is okay to chain offsets together, but it is often easy to mess up an entire drawing by compounding the issue from multiple steps back to back.
So I will go offset, three enter for my typical jam, pick this line, down and click, enter to say I am done, enter to go back in, three feet, enter, this line, down and click, enter to say I am done. Now this is an interesting situation because I want to combine my trim and shift modifier key, but also I need to pay attention to my cutting edges. If I zoom out, I can see that this intersects over here, and I could leave or strand geometry if I don't establish my cutting edges.
I will zoom in and choose trim. First thing I need to do is establish my cutting edges, T enter, and I can pick these geometries as my cutting edges. Enter to lock it in.
Remember to hold shift and then select these lines to extend. And because the outer line was included in our selection set, it will activate as an extension edge. Shift and extend this one as well.
Now I can click and click to remove those geometries, and I will be able to click the left and the right to update that geometry as well. Just be careful. Sometimes AutoCAD does not understand that we extended the lines in the middle of our workflow.
You might need to exit the command and come back in with another trim command to finish this workflow. In this case, my AutoCAD software was smart enough to understand and update my cutting edges as they were extended. But just make sure that your software does the same thing.
You might need to split this up into multiple trim commands. Enter to lock it in. Zoom extends.
CTRL S to save. In the next video, we will finish our door and window openings.
