Explore the process of interpreting floor plans and understanding their complexities. This article provides an in-depth look into the components of a residential floor plan, including the significance of graphic scales, dimension lines and architectural symbols used.
Key Insights
- The title block of a floor plan provides crucial information such as the page number and scope of the drawing. A graphic scale is also included, which can be used to estimate measurements.
- Dimensions on floor plans usually follow a specific order. The first string of dimensions represents the total size, the second string indicates major changes in the structure, and the third string provides measurements from one wall face to another.
- The article also emphasizes the importance of window symbol numbers, which provide specific details about each window in the building. Center lines are also used to indicate the midpoint of a feature, like a window or door.
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Let's begin looking at the first floor plan for the residence. Again, on the bottom right corner of the sheet is the title block. You can see that we're on page A1.0. The graphic area for the house is in through here.
What you'll also notice is that there is a graphic scale that's down there. So let's zoom in on that area. You can see that it's showing 0,1 foot, 2 foot, 3,4, up to 8 feet.
And there are smaller increments there. The drawing is at a quarter inch equals a foot. If you were to print this drawing, regardless, you could always take this area, the graphic scale, and you could copy it, lay it against something to confirm what a measurement is approximately.
Now, the general rule is that you never scale off the drawings. If you have a question, you contact the architect, you contact the designer, and you say, what's the dimension from here to here? You do not measure it yourself. But the graphic scale tends to be a very good way of letting people roughly guesstimate information.
Now, as we start developing into the building, you will notice a lot of similarities from what we've covered before in that you have the building, you have dimensions that go around the building. Now, let me talk to you about some of the procedures in how dimensions normally work. You can see that on this top row, we have three rows of dimensions.
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The first dimension is typically an overall dimension. So this is saying that it's right around 60 feet, 7 inches. The dimension line, I go to the slash right here.
So the beginning dimension is going down here to the outside face of the framing of the building. Now, you notice that some of the walls are dark and some of them have little hash lines in them. The walls that are dark represent the wood framing for the building.
The hashed areas on the outside represents the brick veneer. So again, what we're showing is that the dimension of 80 foot 7 is going from the outside framing on the left up to the dimension line over and down, I'm just following down over here, to the outside framing right here. So the first string is typically overall.
The second string is typically major bumps in the building. So what we're saying is that it's 7 feet from the outside of the framing at this corner to the outside of the framing at this corner, and it's 48 foot 9 from the outside corner here over to the outside corner of the porch over here on the right, and it's 4 foot 10 from the outside corner of the porch to the outside corner of the building. The next string in, what we're trying to do is to indicate measurements from wall face to wall face.
You'll see that it's 5 foot 7 1⁄2 from the outside left face of the framing here to the right face of the framing here. Now, this next dimension, you can see that the line is not quite a solid line. It is what we would call a center line, and this is showing that it's 5 foot 8 from this corner of the framing to the center line of the window, and 5 foot 7 1⁄2 from the center line of the window over to this corner of the framing.
You can see a note right here. You see a number inside a hexagon. That is the window symbol number.
So what's happening is this window in this master bedroom is window symbol number 5, and when we start getting into the window schedule, you will learn more about this specific window number 5. Over here in the bathroom towards the left, you can see there's a symbol number 4, and if I pan over, you can see that window 4 is 4 foot 3, the center of the window is 4 foot 3 from the outside corner of the framing to the center line of the window. Okay, so let's continue on this string. We had the 5 foot 7 1⁄2 outside corner to edge of the wall, 5 foot 8 to center line of window.
I see the window symbol, and I also see a keynote, and then once again, I'm continuing my dimensions to the corners of the framing, and again, you can notice here it's 8 foot 1 from this corner to the center line of the column here, 4,5 from the center line of the column, center line of the door, and so on and so forth. So again, you're seeing consistencies in the drawings. If I look over here on the left-hand side, again, I have my overall dimension string.
I'm showing a dimension for this pop-out. It's like 2 foot 6 from this corner over to this corner down here, and then again, you're seeing major bumps in the building, so the 2,6, the 2,9 foot 2,29 foot 2, the 11 foot 5, and so on and so forth. The third string in, interior walls, and also showing dimensions to center lines of windows.
All windows have window symbol numbers on them, and again, it's consistent throughout the building.
