Explore the intricacies of planning a reflected ceiling plan with a focus on the application of ceiling grids. The article introduces the technical aspects of implementing two common types of ceiling grids, commonly seen in commercial buildings, and offers detailed steps on how to create these ceilings in different spaces.
Key Insights:
- The article explores the creation of two types of ceiling grids, a two-foot by two-foot lay-in grid and a two-foot by four-foot grid, typically seen in commercial buildings.
- The writer provides a step-by-step guide on how to create these grids, starting from working in paper space to working in model space, specifying it for different rooms like the conference room, restroom, and office 109.
- The process also involves intricate steps like creating custom hatch patterns, drawing lines to mark the perimeter, making sure the ceiling grid does not extend from the room, and copying and mirroring lines to create the grid.
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Now let's move forward to the reflected ceiling plan, sheet number I-105. Here on this sheet, let's start with the basics. We'll notice that we're in paper space, which means we're here in the sheet, and on the top right we have some ceiling notes that talk about how to do the ceiling and what some of the notes mean, and then we have here the ceiling grid legend.
We have two types of ceiling grids. We have a two foot by two foot lay-in grid and a two foot by four foot grid. Now these are the tile ceilings that we see very commonly in commercial buildings.
They are suspended, which means they are below the structure of the building. They hang down lower in the space. Now the entire project doesn't have these suspended ceilings.
We have it in the conference room and the restroom, but the rest of this main space is open to above, which means it's open to see the trusses and the original structure of this warehouse building. Well, the offices do have lay-in grid ceilings, and we're going to add them now. So let's go ahead and double click on this view.
We'll notice we're now in model space with the view active, and let's zoom into our office 109, that executive office. Let's go to layer, and we're going to look for the correct layer to place our ceiling grid. It's going to be called a ceiling grid, a ceiling grid.
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Let's double click on that, a c l n g dash grid, make it the current layer. Now we can create the ceiling grids with a hatch pattern, but it does require a custom hatch pattern to do that, or we can simply draw in the lines. In a smaller commercial project like this, I think it might make sense to go ahead and just draw the lines.
So let's go ahead and type in line, l i n e, enter. And I like to start off by looking at the perimeter, and we need to make sure the ceiling grid doesn't extend out of this room. So I like to draw one line on the inside of the doorjamb to the other inside of the doorjamb, and hit escape.
That way it's bounded on all four sides. Now we're going to start with the center line here. Let's type in line, l i n e, and click on the center.
We'll get a midpoint on that upper wall on the inside. Click and go straight down. I have ortho turned on, and I'm going to go perpendicular to the window, and click and enter.
There is the first line of our grid. Now Office 109 is going to get the two foot by four foot grid, and the grid runs vertically. So let's go ahead and copy this over, and we'll copy it over to the left two feet, enter.
And then let's go ahead and copy it again to the left. This time, if we're continuing with that copy command, we have to do some math. We'll type in four feet, which is two feet, two times, enter.
And we'll hit escape. There are all of the lines from the center to the left. Now we'll select the two left lines, and we'll use that mirror command.
We'll click one time on the middle line, and then click again higher up. Click, enter, and now we have all the vertical lines just that quickly. Now let's draw the line down the center, and we're going to be a little bit tricky about this.
Let's go into the line command. I'm going to start on the right, and click this midpoint. Click, and go to the left all the way to this roll up door, and click, and enter.
Now I said tricky for two reasons. One, we don't want a center line going horizontally. We actually want to offset this line.
So let's offset it. We'll select it, and move it. How far up does it need to move to be offset for a 2x4 grid? You guessed it, two feet up.
So go straight up with ortho turned on, two feet, enter. And the second part to the trickiness is we need to do an extend, ex for extend, and extend that line all the way. Now we'll hit escape, and we'll copy this line up, co to copy.
We'll go up, and we'll type in four feet, enter. And that's it. We've got our two lines on the top.
Now we will select both of those lines, use the mirror command, and we need to find that midpoint again of this line. Midpoint, we'll go to the left or to the right. Either way is okay.
Click with ortho turned on. We're going to get our perfect mirror line, and click enter. And there it is.
We've got the ceiling grid for our executive office.
