When designing a house using CAD software, it's important to understand the correct method for drawing walls, joining them into polylines, and offsetting them by the correct dimensions. This article provides step-by-step instructions on how to do just that, ensuring accuracy in your architectural designs.
Key Insights
- The article emphasizes the use of six inches for walls in CAD design, for ease of drawing and consistency throughout the design process.
- Joining lines into a polyline can be achieved by surrounding the entire structure with a window; however, the endpoints of each line segment must touch for them to join effectively into a polyline.
- Cleaning up as you go along is crucial to maintaining an organized and accurate design; this includes trimming, extending, and offsetting lines accordingly to match the desired architectural layout.
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We have the perimeter of the house done and we also have a line drawn that we will eventually be using as the wall that separates the family room kitchen area from the living dining area. So I'm going to keep this line because I'm going to use it later on. Now I understand that most of the walls we normally build are three and a half inches for two by four studs or five and a half inches for two by six studs.
But just to make your life easier, when we draw our walls we will be using six inches for the walls. So right now I'm showing the outside perimeter of the house. What I'd like to do is to take these lines, join them into a polyline, and then offset these by six inches on the inside.
So I'm going to go up to say modify, object, polyline. I'm going to pick one of the lines. I read the prompt.
It says the object you selected is not a polyline. Do you want to turn it into one? The answer is yes. Then I'm going to do a right button and join and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a window around the entire house.
And I'm going to say enter to accept. I see looking right here that it says do I want to open the polyline, which means I in fact have now created a closed polyline. So I'm going to hit ENTER to accept.
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Now when I was taking this one entity and joining it into a polyline, you might have noticed that I put a window around the entire house. And you also might have noticed that when we joined them that this line did not join the polyline. The reason for that is that whenever you have line segments that you want to join into a polyline, the end points must touch.
And since the end points for this line did not touch the polyline entity, that's the reason why this did not join the polyline. So I'm going to hit escape. I'm going to go into offset for six inches, pick on the house, go in, control s to save.
I noticed that I had my running o snap on. I'm going to turn that off right now. Now again what we need to remember is that we have lines and polylines here.
So I want to explode this geometry so that it becomes line segments as opposed to polylines themselves. Okay so I'm going to save the file. The first thing I now want to do is to figure out where do I begin.
So I'm just going to choose a point and start from there. One of the ones that looks easier for me at this point is to start working on the garage. Because I already have these lines here and you can see if you look at the handout that they will turn into the walls over here.
So I'm going to extend to this wall and do a crossing right here. So I've now extended these lines to the wall and again what I want to do is to clean up as I go. You need to remember that the client can call you at any time and say I need to see a progress document and so by cleaning up as you go it just makes your life easier.
So I'm going to go into trim. These will be my cutting edges. Enter to say I'm done.
I'm going to go F enter and pick a fence that goes across there and then F enter or F space bar and pick up to there and control S to save. Now let's go I'd like to start working on this area right through here and you can see that I have a distance of 10 foot 9 and a half from this wall to the equal wall over there. So I'm going to offset by 10 foot 9.5. I'm going to read the dimension strings pick here and here.
If it's 10 foot 9 and a half from this the top side to the top side it's similarly 10 foot 9 and a half up to there. I can see that this garage wall will be coming up to here so I'm going to fill it pick spacebar pick TR spacebar trim enter pick and save the file. Now this line up here was from my living room wall.
I'm just going to trim it down here so that I don't get confused with what I want to be doing down here. I can see that it's nine foot two and a half inches from the outside face to the left and if it's nine foot two from the right face to the right face I'm going to pick and go to the left over here. I'm now going to fill it to clean this up and control S to save TR spacebar and clean this intersection up over here.
When I look at my furnace area I can see that it's two foot three and a half so O spacebar for offset two foot three and a half and again I pay attention to the handout so I'm seeing that this is going from the right side of the wall to the right side over here spacebar to stop spacebar to repeat six inches pick and go to the left. I can see that it's three foot six from the upper face here to the upper face of the wall that's going to be going here so offset by three foot six and I'm going to go top down bottom down TR and then I could just pick this trim clean this up pick here control S to save. Now I want to make sure that my dimensions are correct so I'm just going to do a linear dimension turn my running O snap on from the end of here to the end over here and I can see that it's two foot three and a half so I see that echoing on the screen I'm just going to hit escape to clean it up and then I'm going to hit the spacebar to repeat the dimension linear command from the inside face here to the wall up here three foot six it's fine.
Now if I look at the opening though in this area what I can see in fact is that there is not a wall in this point but there's going to be a closet over here on the left so I'm going to offset by two foot ten I'm going to pick and go to the left enter to stop enter to repeat by six inches pick and go to the right and then I'm going to extend I'm just going to type in EX spacebar for extend up to here these guys and then fill it fill it CTRL S to save tr for trim enter and so I'm picking what I want to have go away for fun I'm now just going to go back to extend up to here and extend these lines so I can now come back go into trim do a crossing and get rid of the parts that I want to have go away so I can save the file while I'm here in the laundry room area I'm going to go on and offset some doors our typical door thickness for this project will be two foot six with a three inch jam behind the doors so I'm going to go o spacebar for offset three inches pick enter to stop enter to repeat two foot six pick and go I'm then going to extend I can either click or type in EX spacebar extend to this these entities tr spacebar trim pick and then come back here and trim it again I'm now going to offset by two foot four and a half two foot four two foot 4.5 pick on this wall go to the right enter to stop enter to repeat 36 inches I'm going to go move so I went m spacebar arbitrary point make sure ortho is on pick it up tr spacebar crossing I just pick over this pick over this pick over this CTRL S zoom extents so I can see my file and we've gotten the block out done for our foyer closet we have the furnace area the laundry room and the kitchen blocked out we're making good progress CTRL S to save
