Add dimensions to your demolition plan using AutoCAD, allowing contractors to understand the extent of demolition for each wall and providing specificity for new doors and windows. Learn how to create a new layer for these dimensions ensuring readability and consistency across the project.
Key Insights
- The article provides insights on adding dimensions to a demolition plan, which is critical in helping the contractor understand the extent of demolition, particularly where new openings for doors and windows are required.
- Creating a new layer for these dimensions allows for enhanced visibility and the ability to hide these measurements from other views. The dimensions are specifically labeled and colored for easy identification.
- The application of the 'dim linear' command in AutoCAD is explained, guiding the user to create linear dimensions at specific points, and making necessary adjustments for clarity and consistency in the demolition plan.
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Now let's add dimensions to our demolition plan. These dimensions help the contractor understand the extent of demolition to each wall, especially in areas where we're cutting new openings for doors and windows. To begin, let's start in AutoCAD and type the word layer.
We need to place these dimensions on a layer and right at the top of our layers we have a-ano-dims. That stands for dimensions. It seems like that would be perfect.
However, we want to be able to hide these demolition dimensions on all of their views. We're going to give them their own layer. To do that, we'll click the new layer button.
That creates a new layer and we'll give it a name. We'll call it a-ano for annotations and then dash dims for dimensions and then dash demo. These are special dimensions just for the demo plans.
We'll make sure the color is set to white. It's right there, white. Then we want the line type to be continuous.
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That looks good. Now we need to make sure it's the current layer. We'll double click and it should show that current layer a-ano-dims demo.
With that set up, we can create our dimensions. Let's go down to this bedroom on the first floor and we'll start right here on the left side. Let's type in dim linear.
This is for linear dimension. We'll click right here at the fireplace and then we'll go up to where the demolition begins and click a second time. We'll pull that dimension string back and click another time to place it.
Click and there it is, our first dimension. It's four inches and it is a little close to that fireplace. We can click it if we like and we can make minor adjustments.
For example, we can grab the blue dot next to the number four, click, pull it up, and now that number four might be easier to read when we print this out. Let's repeat that. We'll do dim linear for our command and we'll dimension the bottom point of this new door opening.
Then we'll click the top point, pull that dimension string back, and I like to click on the previous dimension one time because that will line that up perfectly. We're all set there dimensioning that opening. Now let's go across to the right and we'll do dim linear again.
We'll click one time here, another time. We'll pull it back and click to place our eight inch dimension. I like to mimic the spacing that I already have going so it looks consistent.
Somewhere right there. We'll do it again, dim linear, and we'll dimension both sides of that opening and then click right on the end of that eight inch dimension to place it. There we go, so we've got two done.
Now we'll go up into the bedroom here and do it again, dim linear, and this corner we'll click both portions, pull this dimension string down, click to place it, and we'll do dim linear again. Click, click for that opening and click on the four inch dimension to line them up. Okay, so we've got one, two, three done, and then we have these two inch dimensions up at the top.
Let's use our trick again. Let's click enter, takes us right back to dim linear because it's the last command we used. Now this one's a bit trickier because the two points are pretty far away from each other.
I'll click first right here, the point behind the door. Let me zoom in so you can see it easier. Right here behind the door, I'll click one time, and then I'll click this point out here to the right, and you can see it kind of wants to do that dimension, right? It thinks that's the dimension I want, but if we move our cursor pretty far to the right, eventually we'll get to the two inches, and we don't have to take it too far.
We'll just take it out somewhere here. We'll click, and that two inches is kind of conflicting, so we'll select that whole dimension string, click the little blue dot next to the two inches, and we'll move the two inches to this side of the dimension string, and hit escape on our keyboard, and that should be pretty legible. Let's go ahead and do that to the right side as well.
We'll go back to dim linear, click that little two inch point, click right here next to the door one time, and then we'll notice it wants to do this dimension. Not a problem. Move our cursor to the left, and the two inches should appear, and once we're happy with it, we just click, and it places that dimension.
This two inches is already easier to read, so we'll leave that one alone. All right, and that's it. We got one, two, three, four, five dimension strings.
One, two, three, four, five is what we needed, so we are good on the first floor. Let's pan over to the second floor, and repeat this process for these openings. We'll do dim linear again in this upper bedroom, and we'll click, click, and place that dimension string, dim linear again, and dimension this opening, and that's it.
We really have one to define on the upstairs plan. So that's it. Again, we'll hit our save button.
