AutoCAD is an essential tool for architects, allowing them to calculate the distance between exits in a building in compliance with the 2024 International Building Code. The DIM Aligned tool, in particular, can help calculate the diagonal distance of a building quickly and accurately.
Key Insights
- The DIM Aligned feature in AutoCAD is used to calculate the diagonal distance of a building, which is beneficial in determining the minimum distance required between two exits as per the 2024 International Building Code.
- Through AutoCAD, users can add additional information to the calculated distances, providing a clear visual representation of the measurements and calculations.
- The software also allows users to calculate and compare the actual distance between exits with the minimum required distance, helping to ensure that building designs comply with safety regulations.
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Now let's take a look at the tools that AutoCAD has to help us calculate the distance between exits. So what are we looking for exactly? Again, back in the 2024 International Building Code, where we have two exits, they have to be separated at least half the length of the diagonal distance of the building or area to be served. So AutoCAD has some tools to help us do that quickly.
It's called DIM Aligned. So let's go ahead and try that. DIM, D-I-M-A-L-I-G-N, DIM Aligned.
And the first thing the code wants, generally speaking, is to know the diagonal distance across the building. We'll start in the upper left corner and click one time. And I'm going to uncheck ortho mode or F8 on my keyboard.
And now I can see I'm going on a diagonal distance all the way across the building to the bottom right corner. I'll click and then click one more time. And there it is.
Just like that, I've calculated the diagonal distance across the building. That's a very common ask of a building code. Now let's zoom into that diagonal distance and add some additional information here.
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So I'm going to double click and I'm going to add the words diagonal distance. And I'll put the equal sign, equals. And then you'll see that AutoCAD is calculating that distance.
And that's perfect. Now we'll click away. And there it is.
My only trouble now is it's a little hard to see. I'm going to click on it, turn off OSNAP, click the blue dot in the middle, and just move it to the right so it has room to breathe. There we go.
That is our diagonal distance. Now we need the distance between the two doors. We'll use that same little magical tool again.
So DIM Aligned. And we'll click right here. I might want to use OSNAP again.
OSNAP. And click right there at that door. And then click right here in the center of this door.
Right there. And click again. And there it is.
I have the distance between the doors. Now I just double click and we can say distance between, and I might shorten this, distance period between exits equals, it'll be about 60 feet or so. And then we'll add some more text at the end.
So I'm kind of just moving my cursor to the end. And I'll say minimum distance between exits equals, and then we'll put our diagonal distance. 69 feet, 9 inches.
We'll just round that up to 70 feet. 70 feet divided by, and then the code tells us what to divide by. It says one half the length.
Now there are exceptions. If it's sprinkler, it usually goes to one third of the length. We'll just do divided by two because that's easy.
Divided by two equals 35 feet. We're showing our math. We have the distance between exits and it's calculated by AutoCAD.
And then we can show the minimum required. And that's about it. Sometimes I'll add, therefore, okay.
Just to show that we're okay. We've got 70 feet is plenty more, or I'm sorry, the 59 feet is plenty more than the 35 feet we provided. Therefore, it's okay.
We'll click away, and there it is. And like the other one, we might want to move this a little bit out of our egress path. I'm going to turn off OSNAP so I can be more precise.
And that looks pretty good. And that's it!
