Understanding how to incorporate and orient blocks, such as sinks and toilets, within a floor plan is crucial for creating accurate and efficient architectural designs. This detailed guide offers step-by-step instructions on how to add, rotate, and move these elements within a floor plan using AutoCAD software.
Key Insights
- Blocks, such as sinks and toilets, can be added to a floor plan by copying them from a blocks drawing and pasting them into the desired location in the floor plan.
- The orientation of these blocks can be adjusted using the rotate function (R-O), which allows users to specify the degree of rotation needed. For example, typing in '180' will rotate the block by 180 degrees.
- The AutoCAD program allows for precise movement and positioning of blocks within the floor plan. Users can move blocks in two dimensions, adjust their distance from walls, and align them with other elements in the plan using the move function (M).
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Now let's add the blocks for our bathroom. Let's first open up this blocks drawing, and we're going to look for the sink category, and we want our sink bath pedestal. We'll select that, CTRL C to copy it, go back to our floor plans, zoom into this powder room on the first floor, and CTRL V to paste.
I'll click one time, and there it is. I want to select it now, and type in R-O to rotate. I'll click one time on the back, and I'll type in 180, and click enter.
There it is, 180 degrees, and it's in the correct orientation. Now I want to move it up to the corner, and there is no corner on the sink, so I'll select it, and I'll have to move it two times. M for move.
First, I'll click on the back, move it straight back to that wall, and click a second time, and there it is. Select it again, M for move, click on the right side, move my cursor to the right, get that perpendicular, click, and there it is. I had to zoom in because I wanted to put it on the midpoint, and I don't want that.
I want it to go straight, perpendicular, so that it is exactly in this corner. Now I can select it again, and M for move. I'm going to move it twice again, once to set its location, left and right, it's three feet.
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Three feet, enter. Now I want to pull it away from the wall two inches, I'll select it, M for move, and I'll go down two inches, and enter. There it is.
Now I'll select it, and go to properties, and change the layer. We know this is a sink, so I'm going to have to change my layer all the way down to the P's, P fixed sink. There it is, and it looks really good.
I'll select it, and let's copy it up to the second floor. So C-O to copy. I'll click one time on the back.
I'll move up to this bathroom. I have ortho turned on, so it wants to move just straight across, but I can force it to the bathroom by clicking on something in the bathroom, snap, and it puts it right here in the bathroom. Now I'll hit escape, because it wants to keep placing more sinks.
Hit escape, select this sink, and R-O to rotate. I will click somewhere on the sink one time, and just move my cursor straight down, and click again. That rotates it, so that it will align with that other sink.
I'll select it, and I'll move it two times to get it to the corner. First, I'll grab right here, and go straight down. You might wonder, well, there's nothing there.
We're in the door. Well, AutoCAD has a cool feature. If I want it to go to the first face of this wall, I just hover over it.
I can move my cursor back, and it will align right to that face of the wall. Pretty cool, right? Just kind of moving my cursor, and I'll get it where I want it to go. Let's click that sink again, M for move, click the back, and go perpendicular, straight back.
There it is. At the end of the day, I want the sink perfectly in that corner. Now I want to move it up into place.
I'll select it, M for move, click one time, and I want to go up one foot, five inches. Enter. So one foot, five inches.
Last but not least, I need to pull it out into the room a little bit. So I'll select it, M for move, click one time in the room, move my cursor to the left, and type in two inches, enter. And there it is.
It's lined up with the sink next to it, and looks really good. Okay, now we need the toilet in our powder room. Let's go back to our blocks.
We'll zoom out, find the toilet category, select that toilet, and Control-C to copy, go back to our floor plans, and Control-V to paste, click one time. We'll select it, R-O to rotate, click on the back of that toilet, and type in 180 for 180 degrees, and enter. Now we'll move it up into the corner.
You know the drill. Move it to one side, move it again, get that back lined up so it's directly perpendicular, and in the corner. Now I need to move it into place.
I'm going to pull it out the two inches, and now I need to go to the left. M for move, I'm going to move it exactly nine inches, nine inches to the left. So I'll type in nine inch, enter.
There it is. Now let's set its layer. I'll select it, properties, enter, and the layer is currently zero.
Let's drop that down, scroll down to the P, and we're looking for P fixed toil, for toilet, P fixed toilet. There it is. It turns green and looks good.
Let's just zoom out and see we have everything. In our bathrooms, it looks like we do. We're all good.
We can hit save and move on.
