Discover the steps to layout primary walls using reference planes as initial location guides, ultimately leading to the creation of a wall framing for a lobby entrance. Learn how to adjust dimensions, use keyboard shortcuts and avoid unnecessary extra dimensions for efficient architectural design.
Key Insights
- The article explains the process of using reference planes to create wall layouts. It covers the initial step of drawing vertical and horizontal reference planes, adjusting their measurements to the desired dimensions, and using them as guides to draw the walls.
- The importance of keyboard shortcuts in accelerating the workflow is highlighted. The commands 'RP' to activate the reference plane and 'CC' to copy a selected item are explained.
- The article emphasizes the need to delete unnecessary reference dimensions once they are set. Keeping them could lead to potential conflicts as dimensions based on reference planes might differ from those based on actual walls, causing potential errors in design.
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For the layout of our primary walls that are going to frame this entrance, we're going to use some reference planes to kind of get us into the right location first, and then we can draw the walls. So I'll start off with my reference planes from Architecture, Reference Plane, and the first one I'll do is just kind of a small vertical one here, and then I'll do the same thing with another one but it'll be horizontal out in this area. And this is the ones where we were talking about in the last video of these being 10'6", and so I'll just draw a dimension from my grid line to the reference plane like you see here.
Clearly not the right number but that's okay because we can adjust that now. And so if I set this at the number I'm looking for which is 10'6", and remember that trick to adjusting that dimension, we don't want to be selecting dimensions, we want to be selecting objects. And so when I select the reference plane itself, then it allows me to change this to 10'6".
So that's going to give me my extents coming out this way. Now I'll need a couple more to define the actual walls going horizontally here. And so here's one, and then I'll just copy it and draw another one.
And the keyboard shortcuts that I'm using here, so RP is going to activate the reference plane command, and then if I wanted to copy something, I could select it and I just use CC, so hitting C twice on the keyboard, and that gets copy going. And once you get that workflow going pretty good, you'll be able to move pretty quickly through the model. So I'm going to draw a dimension string going from the grid line here, and then just working my way down.
And again, these numbers, you saw me draw it, it's just pretty arbitrary. We'll start out here, and I'm going to make this one 12'3", and then the width of that wall element is going to be 2'6", so I'll make that 2'6". And so now I've got the boundary here for that piece that we can draw in.
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So I'll do the same thing. This one's a little easier because we want it to be centered on the grid line, so I'll draw two of them. And for a total of 2'6 clear, that means I need to divide that in half, and so we'll have 1'3 on either side.
And you could always have drawn just one and then mirrored it too. Either way works. Okay, these dimensions aren't really needed, and I actually recommend deleting them once you've got them set.
I'll put them back real quick just in case you need to see them again. But essentially, if you leave them in place, then you run the risk of having extra dimensions on your plan that you don't need, specifically ones that are based on reference planes and not your actual walls that are being built. And that can be an issue because if you have dimensions to reference planes and not walls, then you might run into some conflicts because the dimension to the wall is going to end up being very different, and so we want to make sure we're not creating those kinds of errors.
The reference planes that we created are going to be the bases for the walls that frame the lobby, and then we'll have the slab edge here that's going to be our guide for creating the curtain wall.
