This article provides a detailed step-by-step guide for importing and manipulating existing geometry in architectural projects. The focus is on creating details from scratch, separating different materials in a drawing, and incorporating manufacturer information into details.
Key Insights
- The article guides readers on how to create geometrical details from scratch in architectural projects. It covers how to separate different materials in a drawing, such as a 2 by 4 stud, a water vapor barrier, and stucco for clear and precise detailing.
- The author explains how to incorporate information from the manufacturer into architectural details. This is particularly useful when creating door and window header jam details using preexisting building sections.
- Through the use of the VDCI template, the author demonstrates the process of creating a new detailed drawing. This involves importing layers from previous details, opening specific drawings, copying and pasting information, and adjusting details to add more clarity and precision to the drawing.
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Well, I hope you were successful on your midterm. In our last set of projects, we imported existing geometry, brought in the detail border, scaled it appropriately, and updated dimensions, multiliters, text sizes, and line type scales to appropriately be correct throughout the detail. So again, what we had done was to import existing geometry.
And as I've mentioned before, that happens a whole lot inside an office. There are times when you are creating the geometry for the detail from scratch, and everything is drawn in real size. And if you have different materials that are atop one another, for example, if you have a 2 × 4 stud, and then you have a water vapor barrier on the outside, and then let's say stucco beyond that, you would separate the stud from the water vapor barrier from the stucco so that you could then have keynotes that point to those specific materials.
There are other occasions when we already have information such as building sections, and we need to create door and window header jam details. In those cases, we incorporate information from the manufacturer into our actual details. So let's begin learning about that.
So let's begin a new drawing. I'll go up to Start. I'm going to use the template, the VDCI template.
I'm going to save the drawing with the name Working Window Details. This is going to be a detail drawing that we're going to be compositing many things into. We will eventually end up isolating out the information into defined details.
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One of the first things I'd like to do is to use the Design Center to bring in the layers from some of the details we've already made. So I'm going to go up to Design Center. I'm going to choose VDCI Detail 04, go to Layers, pick on the first, pick on the last, and drag everything in.
Close it. Go back to the Home tab. Go to Layer Properties.
And again, I see that the layers are there. That's fine. Now I'm going to open the VDCI A302 drawing, which you should have in your datasets.
And I'm in paper space right now. I'm going to go into model space. And what I want to do is to bring in information right in through here.
I'm not going to use every bit of it, but I'm going to bring that wall in. So I'm going to say Edit, Copy with Base Point. I'm going to choose an arbitrary base point and then do a crossing.
And you can see how much stuff I'm getting. Enter. I'm going to go Zoom Extents, go to paper space, save the drawing, and go into my working details.
Control V. I'm just going to paste it in at 0,0. Zoom Extents, Zoom Real Time, and save the file. Now you see the hatch from the wall that came in. That's because it's one entity.
And I'm also going to take a line, draw it from here, ortho on, trim, crossing. Save the file. What we're going to be working on are going to be the head and the sill details for the window.
So I'm not going to need to have this information down here. So I will erase out the hatch, erase window down here, remove these areas here, and save the drawing file. When we were working on the building section, we were planning on all of the information being presented at a quarter inch equals a foot or a scale factor of 1 over 48.
Geometry was drawn the correct size, but a lot of detail, no pun intended, was left out. And so what we need to start doing is adding more detail. So let's zoom in.
You can see that we have the volume for the walls and the rafters. But if you think about it, most of us have gypboard on the inside of our walls. So I want my gypboard to be shown.
So I'm going to offset by 5 eighths of an inch. And this is a typical thickness for gypboard. I see this is a polyline.
I'm going to explode both of these and then fillet that and that. Now, we know that yellow is our heavy line weight, whereas this is a medium line weight. So I'm going to match properties.
Here's the source. Here's the destination for these. So in the detail, we will end up seeing where the studs are, but we're also going to see the gypboard.
If need be, we can even put a hatch in through here. But let's look at the window. We're showing that the lines go all the way through the window.
We know right now that the gypboard does not want to cover the window. So I'm going to trim, do a window up here and a window down here. And I'm going to get rid of that line work that's right there.
I can also trim crossing in through here. And what I would like to do, too, is I'm just going to go to modify, break at point. I'm going to break this line at that point right there and then match properties, source, and destination.
Control-S to save. I'm going to pan down here. And everything looks pretty right, but I'm going to trim crossing right there.
We will end up putting the manufacturer's components in that area and also up here. So again, these are still the blockouts that we've used. Similarly, I'm going to go break at point.
This line, break it right there. And back to break at point, this line right here. I'm going to do match properties here to here.
And I think what I'm also going to do is fill it and fill it. No particular method to the madness, just that it's been done. You can see that what I need to do, too, is offset by 5 8ths this line to the right, match properties.
Here's the source. There's the destination. I can also go modify, break at point this line right here and then match properties source and destination.
So what we've done, other than saving the file right now, is we've begun adding enhanced information into the drawing. Now again, this is from the building section. We're going to have details that are up here and down there.
The window does not need to be seen in the detail because what we're really trying to do is a more typical detail. So I'm going to draw a line from here down just to see what's going on. I'm going to move this line from the end of there to the end of there, fill it here and here, match properties, source and destination, and save the file.
If you would please, get your working window details drawing to this point, and then we'll continue on.
