Learn how to set up floor level and ground lines on layer 0 in order to migrate data from your floor plan. This article walks through offsetting a good distance from the floor plan, setting arbitrary distances, and establishing locations for elevations.
Key Insights
- The article explains step by step how to set an offset distance from the floor plan to avoid too close elevations and overcrowding.
- The emphasis is given on setting arbitrary distances such as 15 feet from the model, and 8 feet 1 inch from the top of the plate to the floor level, and 6 from the finished grade to the ground line.
- Lastly, the article guides on migrating data to new layers, specifically the floor level and sea ground, and how to trim down the geometry for a clean and organized drawing.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we are going to set up our floor level and ground lines. Now I'm on layer 0 and this is the layer that we're going to start on because we're going to migrate our data to the floor level and see ground lines anyway.
So let's begin by setting a good offset distance from our floor plan. We don't want to draw our elevation here because that might be too close not only to the floor plan but also the surrounding elevations. So to begin let's draw a rectangle using the outer bounds of our walls this corner to this corner and then the next thing we'll do is offset this a certain distance away.
Now this is an arbitrary distance but in this case we'll use something like 15 feet so that we don't go too far away from our model but we don't stay too close and too crowded. Now I'll go offset 15 feet enter and I'll click here and go out and click. There we go.
I'll say enter to say I'm done and enter to go back in and if we check the handout we can see that the difference between the top of plate to the floor level is an 8 feet 1 inch distance. So type 8 feet 1 enter and I'll go away from the building again and click enter to say I'm done and enter to go back in. Now the last distance is our ground line and there's no dimension given but we know that we're off of the finished grade some distance so I'll just use a distance of 6 enter click and move away and click enter to say that I'm done.
Now this will be the location of our elevations of course one here one here and then here and here. We can choose this rectangle on the building and delete it and now let's migrate our layers. I'll grab these two lines and click the layer drop down and choose a floor level escape escape escape I'll choose this outer line and I'll choose sea ground.
Learn AutoCAD
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
Let's do a zoom extents CTRL S to save and the last thing we need to do here in order to see those dashed lines the center two lines is let's type in lt scale enter and choose 48 enter. There we go now we can see the center two lines in our drawing. Now eventually we will add no plots but before we do that let's block out our geometry just our outer walls in this case and then we can trim our lines down.
So let's go ahead and do that these outer wall lines are going to be on the a heavy layer so I'll choose my layer drop down and select a heavy to set my current layer and now we want to bring down lines straight down so that they are going through this geometry in order to do that let's use the ray command that's under draw it's right here the ray command and in this case I want to turn on ortho so I'll come down and select ortho I'll also make sure that I have endpoint snaps on in my object snaps there we go I have the endpoint snap on so we can get started with ortho on and endpoint on I can zoom in choose my ray command click this endpoint go straight down and click and go to the left and click enter to say that I'm done enter to go back in choose this endpoint go straight down and click straight to the right and click enter to say I'm done same thing up here enter to go back in click to the right and click and up and click enter coming over here enter to go back in one more time clicking this endpoint once to the left and once up click enter to say that I'm done zoom extends control s to save now we simply need to go in and trim all of the geometry out we want to be left with three lines on the inside and two lines bounding you can do this in any way you'd like but I found it easiest to use the fence command by typing in trim and then fence enter so I'll go trim f enter to enter fence and now I can simply move around my drawing intersecting with every geometry I want to trim away again you can do this in a series of steps but I'm just moving around all the way in this kind of plus sign shape clicking one more time here dragging away enter to say that I'm done and then I can come in and clean these up enter to say that I'm done zoom extends control s to save go ahead and go around your drawing cleaning up that geometry with trim you can try with fence or crossing windows but go ahead and finish up your trim and when you're done control s to save and in the next video we will add our no plots and some extra geometry I'll see you there
