Learn in detail about using various tools in AutoCAD to create and duplicate windows in a building design. This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to mirror, move, copy and adjust building elements, demonstrating the efficiency and accuracy of the process.
Key Insights
- The article illustrates how to mirror, move, and copy building elements in AutoCAD, specifically dealing with windows. It emphasizes the speed and precision of using the mirror tool and other shortcuts.
- It explains how to adjust parameters like window height and sill height, demonstrating how to use the computer calculations to save time and increase accuracy. The article provides a technique to easily replicate the windows on different levels of the building.
- The content also shares insights on dealing with different types of windows, like multi-bay windows and ground-level windows, outlining how to adjust their parameters based on the building design.
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Now that we have the framework for our windows and the prototype that we can use pretty much for the entire building, we can go ahead and start moving, copying, mirroring, whatever it takes to get these in. And so I'll pick this one here. And you notice if I grab just the wall, what you're seeing is this kind of triple dash line here.
If I pick that, then I can mirror it about or copy it about one of our grid lines, and that'll allow me to copy the entire thing. So I'm copying the host and all the elements that are attached to it instead of just copying one of them. So I'm a big fan of mirror pick axis because it's incredibly accurate and super fast.
So I'm going to use that again. Remember that keyboard shortcut is M. And you can see by mirroring it, since we set everything up with that two foot offset, we can move pretty quickly here. If you are an AutoCAD user and you have experience using mirror, you definitely have done this before.
We'll use the mirror draw access again. And I'll pick this point, which has the same reference from here to here. And I can mirror at the 45 degree line, or in this case, it's 135.
And it'll use this as my mirroring plane or my reflecting plane. And you can see it flips it right over into place. And so we essentially drew one window and we were able to apply it to all four of these spaces.
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And we're not even done yet. We've got even one more that we could draw without even having to do anything except for using mirror tool about grid line B. And so if I were to look at this in 3D now, you can see we've got all of these windows placed in a very, very short amount of time. And we know they're accurate because we have those reference planes to help us out.
Now we can do the same thing with the level two walls or the level two windows rather. And I can take these ones that we've already created using control by selecting them. And I can actually copy to clipboard.
And then I could paste a line to selected levels. And what I'll do is I'll select level two for that and it'll paste the windows and they're a little tall, but that's okay because we can adjust them based on the parameters of our PDF. You can say, you can see instead of eight feet, it's six feet.
And so I've got them selected and you can see that it's set to eight feet. So my top offset, I could either change this to roof, which will drop it down to five feet. See, I'm paying attention to this unconnected height here.
And so if I need it to be six feet, I can do negative two and it eliminates any extra arithmetic that we have to do because we're just kind of letting the computer do it for us. And now I have my windows for level two. And I just want to double check that sill height is three feet and the height for the second floor windows is six feet.
And so using that information, I'm able to draw in those windows pretty easily. And we're almost done. So it's just the ones on the north side that we have to create.
And this is really going to be a similar process, except for instead of it being a four bay window or five bay window, it's going to be just these three here. If I were to take this one and use create similar, it'll have the parameters that I'm looking for with the three foot offset and the three foot negative offset. And I can take it and I can draw it the exact same way.
And so what I'll do is I'll look for that wall center line to make sure I'm getting it exactly where I want it using space bar to flip the window if necessary. And then you can see this window has way too many mullions. We'll select it and then I can change that vertical grid instead of four.
I'm going to make it two. And then now it matches what we drew or what the CAD file shows. So I can take this window and I can copy it across to the other side using the copy tool.
And if we look at that in 3D, you can see we now have the windows on the north side and they are a little different. And that's fine because those ones, when we look at the PDF, those are supposed to go all the way down to the ground. And that's not a big deal because they are going to have the same head height.
We just need to make sure that the sill height matches. So I'll go jump back to Revit and I can easily select all three of these and I can change the base offset from negative or from three feet to zero. And what will happen is because we have that eight foot one and a quarter horizontal setup, it'll automatically draw that in for me.
And so now we have it set exactly where we want it. So I'm going to go ahead and save again and then we can grab these three windows. We can copy to clipboard and remember control is the key here.
It's also, there's two keys, actually. There's control and making sure, do you see the preview that I'm getting for my selection here? How it's the dash line all the way around and not like one of these individual pieces. You want to make sure it's the dash line all the way around when you select and you're holding down control to add to the selection, because then that'll allow you to copy easily to level two.
So copy to clipboard, paste the line to selected levels, and then we'll pick level two. And again, this one's obviously going to have to change a little bit, but that's fine. We can set both the top and the base.
So the base is going to be a three foot offset and I'll have to look at this one to see what it was, but it was a negative two. So I'll select those again and then we'll set this to roof and this is going to be a negative two offset. And there we go.
That's how we can set up the windows for the north side of the building. And so we've got one more to draw, which is going to be our existing entrance right here. And we'll pick that up in the next video.
