Discover how to add dimensions effectively in design programs, specifically focusing on wall location and gridline usage. Learn to work with tools and features such as thin lines option and witness lines, for a more accurate design.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates the methodical approach to adding dimensions in design programs, beginning with locating all walls using two basis points for reference.
- Using the thin lines option allows the user to distinguish between different layers, reducing the need for repeated work. The article also discusses the use of the edit witness lines feature for precision in locating corners.
- Supplemental dimensions are added to represent clear dimensions for specific sections, such as hoist ways for elevators. The article also explores how to copy dimensions to different floors using the filter tool and making necessary adjustments.
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Now we're going to start adding some dimensions, and I'm going to start like we have been with Level 1. And what we want to do is we want to locate all of these walls, and I'm going to use Gridline 3 and C as kind of like our two basis points. And so if I were to start here with Gridline C and start a dimension to work my way up to locate all these walls, I want to hit the face of stud and then just kind of continuously make my way around.
And then we'll do the same thing as we come back through this way. And so first thing I'm going to do here before I draw the dimensions, I'm actually going to turn the Thin Lines option on here so I can see the different layers. That makes it a lot easier to make sure I'm not having to go back and redo dimensions here.
So I'll go ahead and, like I said, just work my way up from the bottom here all the way through to the top. And so this will be my first dimension string here. And then I'll do one that just takes us overall to the top here, and then work my way from left to right, picking up the rated wall dimensions here, the wall on the opposite side, and then also grabbing these walls as we go through.
And so that'll be another string that I put in somewhere about here. Oh, and I forgot one more. So remember, when we place these, we can always go back.
So I've got this one—I can hit Edit Witness Lines, and then I can grab this corner here. And so now that corner is pretty well located from the two different gridlines. If I wanted to, I can close this dimension.
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There's different schools of thought there. Some people think it's bad and could cause errors if these don't really work because we've got fractions. But I'll leave that up to you guys if you want to add that dimension.
This wall is a vertical wall that hasn't been located. And likewise, these horizontal walls haven't been located. But we do have points in here that have been.
So I can go from, say, this face of the wall here back to this one. And that'll give me my dimension to locate the rest of this Vestibule. And then we can go ahead and find where these are because we know where this wall is.
And I can work my way down to locate these next two walls. And so that gets us a pretty good way through. And then also back to this one here, which just gets you the dimension that goes all the way down and through.
So you're picking the right sides of these things here. And for this one, I actually want to be on this side of the wall. So you can see while we're still active in the dimension, I can easily just go ahead and pick and choose which one I want to select.
And so same thing kind of coming down from this direction here. It's like I want these two walls to align, but they don't necessarily have the same stud width. But it's good practice to use the same side of the stud through so it's easier for layout.
So I'll just kind of work my way going down and through here. And then I'll hit the Elevator Shaft in here. And then that gives me those dimensions for the Utility Rooms that are on the left side of the plan.
And so the whole boundary of the core area here has been dimensioned. And I'm going to add a couple of supplemental dimensions in here now—so things that you would typically see.
We can put a clear dimension, which would represent the clear dimension for our hoistway here. If I add that, then what I can do is I can go in and I can click on the dimension and then click on the text. And I can add a suffix here, which means it'll say the 8 foot 9 and 15/16 inches.
And then I can say "clear" because I want that to be clear. And then just note that this is the hoistway for the elevator. And then I can do the same thing over here with a clear dimension for the hoistway.
And I'm not aligning this intentionally here because I want it to stand out a little bit because it is a different type of dimension. It's intended to say that this needs to be that clear dimension. And you can see it gets kind of close on that side, but it's intended to show that that is to the face of the inside face of those walls.
Okay, so that's the dimensions on the first floor. And then for the second floor, what we could do is we could use our cheat code here, which is to select all the dimensions using our Filter tool. And so these are the dimensions that we have right now.
And I can go ahead and Copy those to Clipboard. And I won't get them all, but I can go ahead and paste this into Level 2, knowing that some of these rooms are not part of Level 2, but that we can still go ahead and add them. So I can do Paste Aligned to Current View.
And so the ones that are available are there for us to use. And then we can go ahead and make some modifications. Like if we did want to have the Electrical and Telecom Room or, you know, every elevator room—or elevator—needs a Machine Room.
And we'll just pretend this is a Machine Room list, which is odd to say, but those typically have that room on the second floor or the top floor. And so we can add that room in here. And those will be the rated wall partition.
And it's set to Finish Face Exterior, which works well because then it'll line up here. And I'll just kind of mock it in by just drawing in the walls. And you see, I didn't get it perfect here.
And that's not a big deal because we can use the Align tool to line things up. And you may have noticed when I drew this, it told me that we have a Room Separation Line and a wall overlapping. And that's because previously there was a Room Separation Line that kind of divided up the shell space from the core area here.
And no big deal. So what I'll do is to finalize the dimensions in this room, I'm going to go ahead and edit this witness line, take it to the next stud here. And for some reason, this one's not letting me draw the dimensions.
So honestly, when it does that to me, I will just redraw it because it's just not worth the hassle to try to get that to work. So I'm going to go in and then I'll just draw in these dimensions here to locate these walls. And then I'll adjust this dimension.
This room doesn't need to be that big. So I'll make it 4 foot 6 inches wide. And we'll need to add in a door, and 36 × 84 should be fine for that.
And I'll put it 4 inches away from this portion here. So just going through, drawing the door, adding a dimension, locating it properly. And then we can add a room for this.
And so I'll use RM as my room keyboard shortcut. And since we get to place this one at the same time, we get the tag on it, and we'll have to add our tags for the rest of them later. But now we've got our Elevator Room set up.
We've got our dimensions set up. And it looks like they all came across with that neat copy trick. And it looks pretty good.
So next video, we're going to go ahead and take a look at adding our room tags and door tags.
