Explore the process of designing a kitchen layout using Autodesk's 3D design software. From loading in different casework families, adjusting the cabinet positioning and layout, to adding an island and placing furniture, gain an understanding of how to create a functional and aesthetically pleasing kitchen space.
Key Insights
- The design process starts by loading in a variety of casework families to give a good base of different arrangements for cabinets and drawers for the kitchen layout.
- Autodesk offers numerous options for countertops including those with sink holes, which can be adjusted in size, and the sink's location can be shifted around on the cabinet as needed.
- The process of designing the kitchen continues with the addition of an island, which is constructed in the same way as the wall cabinets. The island countertop can be loaded in separately, and its depth is adjustable to fit the design requirements of the space.
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For the casework, we're gonna go ahead and load in a few families as well. And there are a ton of casework families that we can use here from different types of arrangements. So whether it's cabinets and drawers, or all drawers and all cabinets, that's something that we can definitely explore as you get deeper into a project.
But for our purposes here, we're gonna keep it pretty simple. So I'm gonna go to Insert and then again, Load Autodesk Family. And I'm gonna hit the Home button here so that it'll take me back to our main area.
And then if I go to the Casework category, this'll take me into the area that has a ton of different casework. And you can see here, there are many things that you can choose from here. And you're able to put together a pretty decent kitchen layout.
I mean, it may not be the exact style of cabinetry that you're trying to use, but it does give you a good base to use to lay out a space. And so we're gonna start with our base cabinets. I'm just gonna use the Base Cabinet.
This is the two-door, double door with two drawers here. And I'll go ahead and load that in. And since we have 12 feet to work with here, we're gonna go ahead and, using the CM (that's the keyboard shortcut for a component), I'm gonna go ahead and place this in the right orientation.
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And you'll always know that it's facing the right way when you're looking at it in plan because these objects are always going to be on the front. So I'm gonna do three 48-inch cabinets here. And that fits in too perfectly.
Some of you might be squirming because that's right up against a concrete column, but I promise you it'll be okay because this is just for the class. So those are the cabinets that we've put in here. And just so you can kind of see what they look like, I'll go ahead and make an interior elevation so you can see what this looks like as we go through.
And so here are the cabinets that we created right here. This is that concrete wall that we have on that side. The next thing we'll do is I'm gonna draw a cabinet that's gonna go over the top of this.
We're gonna go to Insert, Load Autodesk Family again. And we're already in that Casework category—it kind of keeps you in there.
And if you scroll down to the bottom, you can see that there's a Countertop with Sink, there's a Countertop with Sink Hole, and there are all kinds of different options for countertops here. We're doing just a regular countertop. You can pick the one with the sink hole, and you can adjust the sink hole size and then load in the type of sink that you want.
But like I said, we're just gonna try to keep it simple for this project. We'll take a look at the parameters for this one since they can be a little tricky. So I'm gonna load that in.
We'll go ahead and use the Component tool to place it. You can see the sink is off to one side, which isn't that big of a deal. But it's great because it's all instance parameter-based.
If I know my length here—which we do—we can change it to 12 feet. The sink location is the dimension from the edge to this center point right here. If I go in and say, all right, I want our sink location to be in the middle, I can say six feet, and it'll put it in the middle.
You even have the ability to kind of shift it around on the cabinet if you wanted. But for what we're doing here today, this is gonna be just fine. So I'll go ahead and move it to that point there.
Then let's take a look at it in elevation. You can see it pops the sink in right there. And if you're looking at this and saying, oh man, that shouldn't have the drawer because it should just be a blank for the sink—
That's really no problem. We can load in a family—another casework family. If you look at the different options we have, we have one here that's specific for a sink unit.
So I can select that, load it in, and actually just switch it from that cabinet type to the one that's intended to have a sink.
You can see here there's the Base Cabinet Double Door Sink Unit. I can select that one, and then it changes it. It's the same thing for all of these.
If I wanted to have a different unit on these, it would be no problem. I can go ahead and do that very, very easily. Upper cabinets go in pretty much exactly the same way.
We can use a lot of these cabinets for both the ones that are located against the wall, or we can put them out here for our island—which is what we're gonna do right now. So I'm gonna go ahead and draw a reference plane—your new favorite tool. And I'll go ahead and copy this over four feet.
That's the space I want between this counter and our island. Then I'm just gonna take our Base Cabinet Double Door and Two Drawer and Create Similar. I'll rotate it using the Rotate tool because it didn't want me to use the spacebar, but I want to make sure that the cabinets are facing toward the kitchen.
I'm going to change this to the 36-inch unit. You can see I almost made the mistake I was just going to warn you not to do—but you can easily grab the wrong one since all of the different types look the same. So it's easy to just say, "Oh, 36, " but you’ve got to make sure you grab the right one.
So I'll go ahead and grab the 36-inch for the Double Door and Two Drawer. Then I'm just gonna align this with our sink unit and move it into place so that it's on that reference plane. Then we'll do three of these.
That's the first one. I'm gonna copy it up, and then copy it down again so that we have an island in the middle of our kitchen.
The next step here is gonna be to put the countertop on top of that island. We'll go through and do the same process where we can load that in. So Insert, Load Autodesk Family.
We're still in the Casework, so we just need to find the island countertop, which is this guy right here. I'll click Load, and then we can place it using our components.
I'll just rotate it around. You can see it's gonna want to land itself on the edge, so it does give a little bit of an overhang. Then I can just use the grips to stretch this around.
The depth is something that I can control here. In this case, I'm gonna go ahead and make it 3'-6". It looks like I gotta do a little shuffling here because it’d be really tight.
I definitely saw that coming. We'll go ahead and move these over, and then we can put our seats at the bar here.
What I want to do is have four of those. And because we are perfectionists, we're gonna equally space them. So what I'll do is set the ones that I want on the edges first.
Those will be kind of like my north and south pole, effectively. Then I can put the other two in and space everything equally. So I'll go ahead and set these so that they are 1'-3" from the edge.
Because I've got one already and I know this length, I can use the Mirror tool. I can mirror with Pick Axis—which is this one with the pencil here—or Draw Axis, rather. Then I can just copy these two in randomly.
We've done this before in other applications, but it works with furniture as well. So I can go ahead and dimension to each one. When I pick the dimension string, I can hit the EQ button, and it'll space them equally.
No need to keep that, so I'll go ahead and unconstraint it. Now you can see we've got our Break Room all laid out.
I'll just kind of shift that over a little bit so that the distance between the tables and the bar is about the same. And there we go. Now we've got our furniture in our Break Room, and we can go ahead and take a look at adding our furniture into our Conference Rooms in the next video.
