Bring in the 'no plot' in your model to prepare for dimensions. This article guides you through the process of placing the 'no plot' at the center of your model and the importance of estimating the correct scale for your project.
Key Insights
- Bringing in the 'no plot', which is a center-based block, helps to set up the boundaries around the model that can be used to snap dimensions.
- Placing the 'no plot' at the center of the model requires drawing a diagonal line from the bottom-left corner of the building to the top-right, creating a midpoint for the placement of the 'no plot'.
- Setting an appropriate scale for the 'no plot' is crucial. In the example provided, a scale value of 48 is used, which corresponds to a common scale for floor plans of quarter inch equals a foot.
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In this video we will begin our annotation. Specifically we are going to bring in our no plot to prepare for our dimensions.
We're going to bring in the no plot which we remember is a center based block. So the block will be placed at the center of our model. That way the no plot bounding lines will go all the way around our model appropriately and we can use them to snap our dimensions.
In order to do that we need to first set up a place to place the no plot by drawing some construction geometry. So let's get started. I'm going to go to my layer drop down, turn on the no plot layer, and make it my current layer.
Now we want to place the no plot at the exact center of our model, but there's no good snap for that right now. If we remember on our handout the building is 60 feet 7 wide and 59 feet 7 tall. We can draw a diagonal line from 0,0, which is right here, up to that 60 feet 7,59 feet 7, and the midpoint of the line will be exactly in the middle of our building.
So let's go line, 0,0 is our starting point, enter, 60 feet 7,59 feet 7, enter, enter to say that I'm done. Now we can bring our no plot in and place it right at the midpoint of that line. I'll go I enter to open my blocks dialog box and I'll go to my current drawing tab.
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Now before I bring in the no plot I want to change the uniform scale. We're going to make a guess for the size of the no plot based on our anticipated plot scale and I'm going to use 48, which is the anticipated plot scale value for quarter inch equals a foot. Now I happen to know that this will work in this project, but you might have to try a couple different scales when you bring in your no plots for your own projects.
Okay, once we set uniform scale to 48, I can browse. You'll see I'm going to the title blocks folder, but if you aren't make sure you go to your CAD301, blocks, title blocks, and we'll bring in no plot view full. I'll hit open and I'll go shift right click midpoint and I can pick anywhere on my pink line and it will place it right at the midpoint of my drawing.
I'll do a zoom extents, I'll delete out this pink line and control s to save. You can see that our 48 was the correct guess for the scale of this no plot. Very quickly I'll select it and open up properties.
You don't have to do this, but I just want to show it. If I wanted to try a different scale, say 36, and I'll go scale Y as well, 36, we can see that this would be too small. The floor plan is jumping out the top and bottom of our no plot.
So the most appropriate scale here is quarter inch equals a foot and it's also a very common scale for floor plans. I'll go escape, escape, escape, and I'll close my properties palette. I'll also close my dialog box for my blocks and now we can begin dimensioning our floor plan.
I'm going to go make A anodems 48, A anodems 48 my current layer. This is because the scale factor for the no plot is 48, so our floor plan will be at quarter inch equals a foot. We want to place these dimensions on the dash 48 layer.
Also let's go to the annotate tab and change our dimension style from standard to tick 48. Now we are using a dimension style that has a scale of 48 as well. Remember dimension styles might be annotative, they might be drawn in paper space, or they can be drawn in model space at a set scale.
We will be using a set scale for all of our views and we'll talk more about that when we do our detail plan views. Okay now it's time to dimension. I am going to go rather quickly in my dimensioning and I just want to warn you, you might not be able to keep up right away.
That's okay, please pause the video, slow the video down, or simply work along with your handout. The dimensions we're going to use are linear and occasionally continue, but there aren't any other more challenging dimensions than that. Whatever you need to do, please try to make sure all the dimensions that you see on your handout are represented on your drawing.
Okay I'm going to go zoom extents, CTRL S to save, and I'll begin to dimension in the next video. I'll see you there!
