Explore the process of accurately determining the dimensions of various architectural features, including the overall width and height of a building, window placements, door widths, and unique elements like curved walls. Understand how these measurements are conveyed in architectural plans, and how they guide the construction process.
Key Insights
- The article breaks down how dimensions are shown in architectural designs, explaining how to read the overall width and height of a building, as well as the dimensions of architectural features like windows, doors, and unique elements like curved walls.
- Dimension strings are used to show the dimensions from one feature to another. For instance, it's explained how to determine the distance from the end of an extension line to a building edge, or from one window edge to another.
- The dimensioning process also includes the use of symbols and schedules, particularly for windows. These symbols refer to a window schedule chart, which provides the specifics on the lengths and widths of the windows, aiding the contractor in framing the openings accurately.
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The building on the right has a series of dimension strings. There's one up here that shows that the overall width of the building is 17 feet 6 and 1 half. That's going from the end of the extension line down here to the end of the extension line where it runs into the building down here.
So overall width of the building, 17 foot 6 and 1 half. There's a pop out. Our first major break in the building is at 7 foot 6 and 1 half inches.
So that's again from the extension line down here. We read the dimension up here over to the extension line here. On the left hand side, another string of dimensions.
We can see that the vertical height of the building is 17 foot 9. There is one pop out that's 11 foot 9. And that's going from the end of this extension line down here to the end of this extension line up here. We have different ways of dimensioning windows. So what we know in this case that it's 2 foot 10 and 1 half inches from the end of this extension line here to the edge of the window over here.
The window is 6 feet wide. And it's 2 foot 10 and 1 half from the end of the window to the end of the building. Here is another way of addressing how to dimension a window.
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So again on this side, you see that we dimensioned edge to edge of the window. Instead over here, we're dimensioning from the end of the building to the center line of the window and to the center line of this other window. We are not calling out the window dimensions in this drawing.
Rather, what we would have would be a window symbol either here or here, a window symbol here or here. And that window symbol would refer over to the window schedule. And within that window schedule chart, we would have the lengths and widths of those windows.
And when the contractor was framing the openings for these windows, they would go to the window schedule. Similarly for this, we would be calling out the widths on either side of the window itself. But there would also be a window symbol here that would take the contractor over to the window schedule to learn what they're doing.
One thing we included in this plan, just because it's really fun, is we have a giant curved wall here. And you can see that the wall has a 5 foot 0 inch radius. So from this center point right here, the radius of that wall is 5 feet.
So what we know is that the center of this curved wall is 5 feet 0 inches from the edge of the wall right over here. And the center of this curved wall is 1 foot over from the end of the walls right here. So this is what we call anchoring radial dimensions.
And again, one of the beauties is when you're laying out the building, the contractor can easily go in and find out, oh, this arched wall, it's a 5 foot radius. The center of the radius point is 1 foot up from the corner of the building that I already have framed out. And it's also 5 feet over from that very same corner point.
For the string of dimensions at the bottom of the plan, you can see that we're dimensioning from the end of the building over to the edge of the door. We have our slasher tick marks. And so it's 4 foot 3 and 1 half inches from the end of the building to the edge of the door.
We're then calling out the door width as being 3 feet. So again, dimensioning from one side of the door, one jam, to the opposite jam. And then we have 10 foot 3 from the edge of this jam over to the end of the building.
But I'd like to call your attention to this note right here. 3 inch typical. This is the space behind the door going to the jam right here.
So you can see that this is a 3 inch typical condition. When I look at this door up here, you can see that the distance behind the door is not dimensioned, because this 3 inch typical rules up here too. So please spend some time, look at these dimensions, and know that we will be spending a very good amount of time studying dimensions throughout this course.
