Gain an understanding of how building sections are presented in architectural drawings, and learn about the significance of section keynotes. This discussion provides insight into the different philosophies on building sections and the rationale behind showing sections in a representative manner.
Key Insights
- Building sections in architectural drawings present slices or views through the structure, and often include keynotes that start from number 1 and are used throughout all building sections.
- Showing building sections representatively, rather than in great detail, helps avoid potential conflicts between architectural drawings and structural engineering details.
- Building sections provide key information such as roof slopes, insulation locations, and room features like vaulted ceilings, supplemented with graphic scales for measurements.
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.
Let's go on to our next sheet. What I'd like to bring back to your attention is this building section symbol icon, where I see that there's building section number 1 that is shown for the first time on A1.0 and it is found on sheet A1.1. So I'm going to go to my next page. Lo and behold, here is the sheet number A1.1, here is image 1, and here is image 2. Building sections tend to be representative.
They're showing slices through the building. You can see that I have keynotes. Again, I have a section up here for building section keynotes.
So I have keynotes beginning the first number of 1, going down to number 16, and those symbols are used throughout all the building sections. There are a few different philosophies on building sections. Some people show a whole lot of detail in the sections.
Other people don't. Many of us who do not like showing the detail in the section, the reason we don't do that is that if, for example, we started showing how specific connections were constructed in our section, and if the structural engineer were to show those sections differently, then there would be a conflict in the set. And so by showing our building sections representatively, we let the structural call out the true details and we're simply showing the people a view through the building section.
Now, you can see that we're looking through the dining room and this building section is showing that we have a vaulted ceiling in that room. You can see that we're calling out the insulation, that there's insulation above the vaulted ceiling, and then in the flat ceiling areas where the insulation is located there. Down below, I have my roof plan.
Learn Blueprint Reading
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
Now you'll notice in the roof plan, I'm also including my building sections. So you can see how the building section comes here, goes down to here, jogs, and then continues down through that area. So this again is building section one, which is this building section.
Building section two, the horizontal, is this section. And again, when I look at the building section, you can see it is cut in this area, but the section is looking towards the rear of the house. So here I am, for example, in the living room looking towards the windows and the doors in the dining room that go onto the porch.
Again, I have an area for my section keynotes here and an area for my roof plan keynotes here. I also have a graphic scale. Again, this way people, if need be, can roughly sketch out what this values would be and then they can measure off of the drawing.
When I look at my roof plan itself, you can see again I have my keynotes. I'm showing the roof slope. So the roof is sloping at a 5-in-12.
It's going down. From here, it is going down. And the 5-in-12 means for every 12 inches across, the roof goes up or goes down 5 inches.
So that's a 5-in-12 roof slope. If you would, please spend a few minutes on this drawing and then we'll go on to our next one.
