Explore how to accurately integrate roof vents and other architectural details in a building model using AutoCAD. Acquaint yourself with nuances such as utilizing dynamic blocks, adapting block slopes to fit varied roof slopes, and correctly mirror blocks to ensure accurate representation.
Key Insights
- The article provides a detailed guide on how to accurately insert roof vent blocks in a building model created with AutoCAD. It explains how to determine the insertion point and stretch dynamic blocks to achieve optimal positioning.
- Moreover, the guide takes you through the process of aligning the block with the roof slope, and copying and mirroring the block over a ridge line for accurate representation.
- Additionally, the article discusses the placement of other architectural details like address plates and wall lights. It highlights the importance of appropriate placement to adhere to local codes and achieve the desired aesthetic.
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The next thing we need to bring in is our roof vents. In this case we want to use the roof vent elevation side block, but in this case we don't know where they're going to go. We need to pull down some information from the roof plan.
I don't know which side the block is generating from, which side is the insertion point. So the first thing I want to do is make sure that my uniform scale is one, click the roof vent LF side, and place one in my model. I can see that this block is generated from the top side of the vent, which will be closest to the ridge.
So I'll delete this block for now. I'll come up into my roof plan and make sure that you have the roof plan vent, a roof vent layer turned on. And I can just see the roof vents here.
One thing I don't need to see at this point is my wall layer. So I'll go lay off. I'll click my walls.
I'll click my wall hatch as well. And I'll also click the door layer. Now I can clearly see where these vents are going to be.
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The only one we don't see in this view is this vent facing to the back, but we will see the other five. So I'll go X line, enter, vertical, enter, and I want to get the point that's closest to the roof ridge. So this is going to be the quadrant on the right, on the right, and then the left, the right, and the left.
Now I can come down and place my blocks. By default, the block is facing to the right, so I'll start over here. Click the block, place at this intersection.
And I'll do the same up here. I'm just going to place two for now because I want us to take a look at what this block is. This is a dynamic block.
AutoCAD uses dynamic blocks which are assigned certain parameters like distance or scale or size, and give you either a list of options to choose from, or in this case, gives you a sliding option which activates an internal stretch command. When I click the block to make it hot, I see the grip I'm used to. This is my standard grip that gives me stretch, move, rotate, scale, etc.
This is the block insertion point. But over here we see a dynamic grip option. This is a stretch option that lets us stretch the geometry down and up, and will allow us to use this block on varied roof slopes.
I believe the default roof slope for this block is 6 over 12, which means that it won't fit directly on our roof. Over here we see one we just placed, and you can see that slope is just off. But if we come over to our block, click this arrow grip to make it hot, and then find the intersection from where the vertical line intersects the roof and click, we can see that we've now set this to the right slope, 5 over 12.
I'll come up and do the same for this block. And now we have these two blocks at the right slope and in the right location. Now we know that this block needs to be mirrored over the ridge line here, so I'll go mirror, get this block from this end point, straight up and click, and enter.
And this one can be mirrored from the midpoint of here. So I'll grab the block, mirror, midpoint of the horizontal line showing up and click, and enter. I can grab these four construction geometry lines and delete them.
And we can see we just need one more copy. This block should be copied to here. I'll go copy my block from the top end point to the intersection of this line.
Enter to say I'm done, and delete this construction geometry. I'll zoom out, and I can see that there's actually an error here. Not an error, but just something we have to clean up.
I'll use trim, tr, enter for trim, and I'll click the line inside here, enter to say I'm done. We're going to talk a little bit more about our wide lines and our medium lines, the A heavy layer and the A medium layer, and what they represent when we get to the gutters. But just remember, we're going to come back here and do one extra line, so keep an eye out for that in a later video.
Our roof elements are done, so I can zoom out, control S to save. So next I want to bring in the wall lights and this address plate. So let's zoom in and start with the address plate.
I'll scroll up, find my address plate. You see building address is my attribute. I'll click the plate, and I'll come over and click to place.
I'm going to place off to the side here. You can see on the handout we've just used the number one, two, three, four, but you could type the project address if you had it. And now I want to place this in the right location.
There isn't specifically the perfect location for this, so I'm going to do an offset up from here of six feet. Enter six feet, enter. And I'll use the mid between two points of this point and this point.
You can see my insertion point is right in the middle, so I can click to move, shift right click, mid between two points, intersection and intersection, and I can delete that line. If I needed to, I could select this block and use the control keys to go down or up. It really doesn't matter where that address plate goes on the building, unless there's a local code, which we don't know in this case.
Next, let's work on bringing in our porch lights. These should be fairly simple to place as well. I'll click one to bring it in, and in this case, I'll instead of offsetting the line, I'll simply use tracking.
T-R-A, enter. The first point will be the intersection down here. I'll come up six feet, enter.
Enter to say I'm done. When we compare this to the handout, it looks like this is probably a little bit too high, maybe six inches too high. So I'll grab the light, move, and move this with polar on, six, enter.
