Creating a Front Door in AutoCAD: Step-by-Step Guide

Let's begin working on one of our doors. I'm going to switch my current view to the front view.

So I'll go to the view tab, front, and let's talk about this front door. If I go to the home tab and I use my quick measure tool, I can see that this is a three feet wide door. And the door doesn't specifically say on the handout, but the head height of the windows is the same height as the door.

So this door is six feet, eight inches tall, and that's a very standard height for doors. Now, to get my door shape, I'm going to create two construction lines. So I'll go to my draw and I'll create two X lines.

So construction line, H enter for horizontal. And I will grab the same height as my window. And I will actually duplicate my finished floor line because this door is a rectangle.

So I'll duplicate my finished floor line with a construction line. Now I have two construction lines. Okay.

Learn AutoCAD

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

Now we can fill it multiple and connect these lines together. So I'll go fill it, M enter for multiple, and I'll go around and create a rectangle. Make sure you choose the blue line here, of course.

There we go. Enter to say that I'm done. And I'll go control S to save.

Now this rectangle is actually just four lines because these were line segments and not poly lines. So I'll go around and select all four. And then under modify, I will hit join.

This is the join tool right here. The join command will then create a rectangle by connecting all of the lines at their end points. Now we have a connected rectangle.

Let's continue with our door. The door has the same trim distance, which is three and a half inches. We can go offset 3.5 enter.

And I had my rectangle pre-selected so I can click on the outside to establish my trim. Now the bottom of the door doesn't have trim. Instead, it has that little kick plate that we drew in our plan view.

So I need to trim out this bottom and we can actually use the finished floor line as our cutting edge. So I'll go trim, T enter for cutting edge. I'll choose my finished floor line, enter to lock it in.

And then I can pick this line here to trim out the bottom of the door trim. Enter to say that I'm done. Now, if we look at the door, it's made up of a series of panels and those panels run around the outside.

Those panels are actually going to be five and a half inches. We'll go offset 5.5 enter, grab my rectangle, come to the inside and click. I'll say enter to say that I'm done.

Now, if we check the bottom of that door, it's actually 12 inches from the base. So this bottom rectangle line here needs to move up an additional six and a half inches. We can use the stretch tool or we can use our grip edit stretch.

Let's do that. I'll grab my door rectangle, click this midpoint grip, and then I can stretch it up 6.5 enter. Escape, escape, escape.

The doorknob of this door is at three feet off the finished floor. That's a very standard height for the doorknob. And if we check the panel, it looks like the doorknob is right in the middle.

So that panel will have five and a half inches, but the center of it is at three feet from the finished floor. So let's quickly offset our finished floor line, three feet enter. I'll grab the finished floor line and come up and click enter to say that I'm done.

Enter to go back in. This is five and a half over two, which is 2.75 inches. Enter here up and here down.

Enter to say that I'm done. You can see my lines are just above the bottom of this window. So make sure yours look like that.

And I will now fill it and trim to get these rectangles to look like they do on our handout. So I can zoom in. The first thing I want to do is trim out using this rectangle and using these lines here and here.

So let's go trim. I'm going to select my cutting edges by going T, enter. And my cutting edges are going to be this line, this line, and the rectangle.

Enter. To start, I'll trim out top, bottom, and top, bottom. And then I'll zoom in and choose the sides of the rectangles here and here.

Notice I am leaving that middle line in place so that we can place our doorknob. Now I can select this rectangle segment and this polyline and this rectangle segment and this polyline. And I'll go join one more time.

Because these rectangle segments and polylines aren't connected to each other, they simply join into two separate rectangles. We can see that here. We found four objects.

Two segments were joined into two polylines. Excellent. Now we need to add our doorknob.

The doorknob will be a 2.5 inch diameter circle. And it will be in the middle of this panel and the middle of that panel. We'll track from this intersection 2.75 inches to the right.

So let's go circle. T-R-A, enter for tracking. My first tracking point will be the intersection here.

I'll go to the right, 2.75, enter. Enter to say that I've done tracking. Now we want to establish a diameter.

So D, enter. And the diameter value is 2.5. 2.5. Enter to lock it in. And now we can get rid of this three-foot offset line.

Delete. Now there's two more things we need to do. First, let's add in those one-inch offsets on the insides of both of these panels.

Offset, a distance of one, enter. From this rectangle in and this rectangle in. Enter to say I'm done.

Finally, you'll notice that there are two lines on our handout representing door swing. Those are center lines, but we're going to keep them on the medium layer. Now they point to where the hinge location is for our door.

And that way in elevation, we can see how the door is going to swing. If there is no swing, there might be an arrow for a sliding door. But in this case, the door does swing with the hinge on this side, and it's opposite the doorknob.

So let's draw some lines. I'll go line, F8 to turn off ortho, and I'll click here at the endpoint, to the midpoint here, to the endpoint here. Endpoint here, to the midpoint here, to the endpoint here.

Enter to say that I'm done. Now we want to change these lines to our center line. If I go to the dropdown here, we can see center two is in our drawing already, and we can actually use that.

So I'll pick both of these lines, and change them to center two. Now the problem here is the lines are too short to show this pattern. So I will right-click properties, and change their line type scale per object.

This is not the global line type scale we've used before. This is just for these two lines. And you can see here it says line two.

So I'll change this to 0.25, enter. And now we can see that center two pattern. I'll grab them again.

Let's instead go to 0.5, enter. That's a little better. I'll hit the close button on the properties.

And one final thing we want to do is add in that piece at the bottom of the door, which sticks out past the finished floor. That is a one inch from this point, and one inch from this point. I'll quickly measure to see how wide my trim is.

I can see it's three feet seven inches. So I'm going to draw this rectangle at a distance of three feet nine inches. So it's one inch to the left, and one inch to the right.

And it's only going to be one inch tall. So let's go rectangle. I'll zoom in here.

My first point will be T-R-A, enter. From here to the left, one, enter. Enter to say I'm done with tracking.

Now we need to set our dimensions. D, enter. Three feet nine, enter.

And one, enter. And now I want to click in my quadrant, which will be this direction here. Click.

Excellent. I'll zoom out and control s to save. In the next video, we will create a block from this geometry and add the door on the other side of our building.

I'll see you there.