Making a Floor Plan

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RUBRIC

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This is going to be a lengthy tutorial but it will demonstrate the correct process for creating a floor plan. Most of the sizes we will input are subjective and can be changed but just for this purpose, let's just follow along and keep it simple.

You can use this tutorial to teach you how to make your own floor plan. Just make sure you have the following:

2 Bedrooms
1 Bathroom
1 Kitchen
1 Living/Family Room

You can use the same measurements listed below but I want you to at least change the flow of rooms from the tutorial.

Setting our Units

We’ll set the proper units in this template by typing UNITS
Set these settings to:

• Type: Architectural
• Precision: 0’-0 ¼”
• Insertion Scale: Inches

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Drawing the Exterior and Interior Walls

Now you’ll start with the rectangle and click anywhere in the drawing.

• To start the rectangle, you need to make a rectangle with a length of 50 feet and a height of 31 feet
• Type @50’,31’ press ENTER

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Select the line tool and start at the bottom right corner of the rectangle, do not click yet BUT start moving the curser in an upward direction. You should see a small box labelled extension.
If you do not see the extension box go to:

• The object snap - left click
• Turn on extension

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Once the extension is enabled go the bottom right corner, drag your mouse upwards and enter the amount of 15’ with the line tool active - press ENTER.

Move the cursor to the left and enter 12’ – press ENTER      
Note: F8 enables ORTHO MODE to draw straight lines

Move the cursor down and either type 15’ again OR connect it to the bottom edge of the rectangle.

• You should see a perpendicular point appear which looks like a small right angle. Click to draw your line and press ENTER to confirm.
• Continue to draw a line off of the 12' line you made earlier by these measurements: 6’, 10’, 22’ all travelling to the left – you should have a shape that looks like the picture to your right.

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Go to the line tool again, and draw one line from the 6’ endpoint we drew and connect it to the top edge. Repeat this line for the 10’ endpoints.
Select the OFFSET tool by typing OFF -  press ENTER:

• The tool will then ask you for a distance, put 10” – press ENTER
• The tool will then ask you to select the object to OFFSET
• Select the outer edge of the rectangle and click outside of the shape to confirm

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Now you are going to OFFSET the interior walls

• Select the OFFSET tool once again and type 6” press ENTER
• OFFSET the interior walls according to the picture to the right

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 Now you are going to select OFFSET again and OFFSET the interior wall right in the middle of the rectangle upwards by 10’ – Don’t forget to also OFFSET this wall by 6” to create the interior wall thickness.

Now you have to clean up the geometry!

• Type TRIM press ENTER twice to enable the trim tool and begin to clean up the interior walls.
• Do this so all the walls are connected without boundaries.

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• Your drawing should look like the image to the right. 

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Creating Blocks

You are going to create two sets of blocks which will be your windows and doors. Make sure to follow along closely because this can be tricky.

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Interior Doors

Before you begin, go to the layer’s palette and select LAYER PROPERTIES. You going to create some new layers!

• Create the following layers using the colours shown to the right.
  • The new layer button is circled in the picture to the right.

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• Now to select one of the layers you just built, return to the LAYERS palette and click on the drop-down menu and choose the layer labelled DOOR.
• Now draw a rectangle using the following dimensions
  • @3”,3’ and press ENTER
• Now make a second rectangle with the following dimensions:
  • @3”,6” and press ENTER
• Now you are going to move the smaller rectangle and attach it to the larger rectangle using the MOVE TOOL
• Now you go to the ARC TOOL and select the dropdown and choose the CENTRE, START, END option.
• Click the bottom left corner of the large rectangle, then click the top left corner of the large rectangle and move the cursor to the left and down to draw your arc.
• Now copy the smaller rectangle to meet the edge of the arc you just drew. You will need to use the COPY TOOL.  You have now created your interior doors.
• Your door should now look the image on the right. If it doesn’t you made a mistake!

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Exterior Door

To create the exterior door, you are going to make a double door entry. The key thing to remember here is the small rectangles you built for the interior doors (door jams) were sized to 6” in height to fit your 6” offset interior walls. Your exterior doors need to have a 10” (door jam) small rectangle.
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• Now draw a rectangle using the following dimensions
  • @3”,3’ and press ENTER
• Now make a second rectangle with the following dimensions:
  • @3”,10” and press ENTER
• Now you are going to move the smaller rectangle and attach it to the larger rectangle using the MOVE TOOL
• Now you go to the ARC TOOL and select the dropdown and choose the CENTRE, START, END option.
• Click the bottom left corner of the large rectangle, then click the top left corner of the large rectangle and move the cursor to the left and down to draw your arc.
• Now select the items you just drew and you are going to use the MIRROR TOOL. Once the tool is active it will ask for the first point of the mirror line – click on the bottom point of the arc once, now move your cursor upwards in a 90˚ angle, you will see the mirror image being created in real time.
• Once the mirror looks accurate left click to confirm – you will then be prompted to “erase source objects” to which you click NO.

Your door should now look the image below. If it doesn’t you made a mistake!

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Windows

Now to begin select one of the layers in the LAYERS palette and click on the drop-down menu and choose the layer labelled WINDOW.

•   Now draw a rectangle using the following dimensions
  • @5’,10” and press ENTER
• Now you have to explode this rectangle by clicking it once and then type X on the keyboard and press ENTER. This will create four separate lines of the rectangle.
• Now you have to OFFSET the top and bottom lines of the rectangle by 2”. OFFSET both lines to the inside of the window.
• Now you have to copy the far right line, select it, enable the COPY TOOL and paste it on the midpoint of the entire rectangle.
• Now enable TRIM to clean up the geometry. Your shape should look like the one below.

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Converting Doors and Windows to Blocks

Now you have the doors and windows built, the next step is to convert them into blocks so we can use them freely in our drawing.
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• Go to the BLOCK palette and select CREATE
  • Give your first block a name such as, “DOOR 1”
  • Click the PICK POINT button and choose the bottom far right of your interior door (this tells AutoCAD that you want to insert your shape from this point)
  • Now choose the SELECT OBJECTS button and draw a box around the whole interior door – press ENTER to confirm
  • You should now see you shape as evident on the picture below.
  • Click OK once everything is correct

Perform the above steps to also create new blocks for your exterior door and window – To view your newly created blocks return to the BLOCK PALETTE and click the down facing arrow under the word Insert - you should see your three blocks. If you don’t, you’ve done something wrong.

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Adding Blocks to our drawing

Now that we have created our doors and windows, we need to add them to our drawing. Place the windows and doors in the same locations demonstrated by the image below. You will need to use the copy tool to do this.

How to insert blocks into our drawing:
Blocks Palette -> Insert dropdown -> click and drag the block you want to insert into the model space.

Once you have the desired block in the model space, you can then place the blocks into the walls of your drawing using the  COPY tool to create multiples and place them into the desired locations.

Once the blocks are in the locations you want, you will have to most likely use the ROTATE tool found in the DRAW Palette to rotate your shape into place - remember, doors open INTO rooms on a traditional basis.

Make sure the door jams we created (represented by the smaller rectangles) are IN the walls themselves, we made them 6" and 10" for this purpose.

Place your doors into the locations shown in the image below. 

Now that you have placed your doors, use the TRIM tool to clean up the geometry and create the openings in your floor plan.

Your image should now look like the one below once you have completed using the TRIM tool.

Now you can begin placing your windows using the same techniques as when inserting the doors. You will most likely have to use the COPY, ROTATE, MIRROR tools. In this case, you do not have to use the TRIM tool to clean up any geometry - the windows will cover the object lines we created for our walls.

Please place your windows in similar locations as the ones shown in the image below.

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Adding more blocks

One of the benefits of using AutoCAD is that it has many users and contributors to the program. So much so that it has a library of blocks accessible for us to use in our drawings created by industry professionals. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to both access this library known as the Design Centre as well as place those blocks into our drawings.

How to access the Design Center:

• CTRL + 2 on the keyboard
• Typing: ADCENTER into the command line

Both above methods will bring up the Design Center available in AutoCAD.

Once open, immediately click the HOME button at the top of the window that appears, symbolized by a little house - this brings you back to the root location of the center which will help you navigate better.

To access our blocks, Click the following:

• en-us
• Design Center

Here you will find the list of drawings and here you can select your required type of block from this list.

Let's click:

• House Designer
• Blocks

And we are going to bring into our drawing by clicking and dragging them into our model space, but before we do this, we have to make sure we are on the correct layer that we built earlier for this purpose. So, return to the LAYERS palette and ensure that BLOCKS layer is selected:

• Bathtub
• Toilet - Top
• Sink - Oval Top

Once those are in your model space, click the following:

• Home
• en-us
• Design Center
• Home-Space Planner
• Blocks

And bring in the following to your model space:

• Bed - Queen
• Dining Set
• Lamp - Table
• Sofa - Roundback 7ft
• Plant - Rubber

Once those are in your model space, click the following:

• Home
• en-us
• Design Center
• Kitchens
• Blocks

And bring in the following to your model space:

• Range - Oven - 30 in top
• Refrigerator - 2 door - 36 in top
• Sink - double - 36 in top

Now that we have brought in all of our blocks (should be 11 in total - double check to make sure you have them all) we can close the Design Center and begin adding these blocks into our drawing - add them into spaces as displayed in the image below.

You may notice that I added some extras like some bedside dressers, a large coffee table in the living area as well as a Television that is wall mounted. You may add a few extra details if you'd like but remember, this is only for practise - you will get the opportunity to demonstrate your creativity and designing expertise when you create your own floor plan.

To create a rounded edge Coffee Table:

• Add the table by drawing a RECTANGLE - I didn't use a size I just drew it freehand based on the size of the sofa's
• Select the FILLET Tool located in the MODIFY palette.
• Choose RADIUS in the Command Line.
  
• Approximately select the radius by clicking at two points within the coffee table - closer the two points the smaller the radius and vice versa.
• Then click POLYLINE in the Command Line.
  
• Then click on any of the edges of the coffee table to have the FILLET tool take effect.

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Finishing the Kitchen

Now we have to add our counter tops in the kitchen by following the steps below:

Select the LINE tool
Click between the Refrigerator and Range and draw a line down at a length of 3'.
Connect the 3' line to the edge on the right side of the kitchen to complete your first counter top.

Now we need to draw the counter top for the sink on the right side of the kitchen:
Select the LINE tool.
Move your cursor to the endpoint located on the inner bottom-right corner of the kitchen - DO NOT click, rather move your cursor to the right to create an extension, type 3' once this is active.
Finish the countertop by drawing the line upwards connecting to your existing counter top.

You can now select the TRIM tool to clean up the geometry as well as move the Range and Sink into proper places on the counter tops to represent reality.

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Adding Hatches

Now we can add hatches to our drawing:

Change the layer from BLOCKS to HATCHES in the LAYERS palette.
Select the HATCH tool in the DRAW Palette

Now you will be greeted by the HATCH CREATION palette
Choose SOLID in the PATTERN section and proceed to click within the walls to add a thick green line with will be represented when we plot these drawings as the wall thickness. Be careful with the Hatch tool, its CPU intensive and may crash your computer - I recommend saving NOW!

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Adding Text

Now we can add the text to act as labels for our rooms we created in this floor plan. Before adding the text we need to change the text style which will be the text that we use everywhere in the drawing.

Go to the ANNOTATION palette
Expand it and select the A with a brush - if you hover the cursor over the option you will see that it is labelled 'Text Style'

Change the following information in this new window:

• Font Name: change to 'simplex.shx'

You can change the height if you wish but this can be changed afterwards so don't worry about this step.

Now click 'Apply' and 'Close'.

Adding text to the drawing

• Change the LAYER in the LAYERS palette to 'TEXT'
• Click the Text dropdown menu in the ANNOTATION palette and select MULTILINE TEXT. You can also type 'MTEXT' in the Command Line - now we can add our text.
• Create a textbox within the room on the top left of the floor plan and type BEDROOM 1
• Now we will change the size of the text. Highlight the text 'BEDROOM 1' and on the top left of the screen you will see a palette called STYLE and within that palette there will be a dropdown menu usually displaying 1/4" - we need this to be 1' so we can see our text. So, we enter 1' in the text field and press ENTER and now click outside of the exterior wall for your size change to take effect.
• Now we need to make copies of our BEDROOM 1 text to keep the size and style the same, and we will adjust what the text says by double clicking the text and re-labelling the information.
• ​You're drawing should now look like the image below!

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Adding Dimensions

• ANNOTATION palette - click the dropdown menu and choose DIMENSION STYLE, this will open the DIMENSION STYLE MANAGER.
• Within the manager, to the left there will be a section called STYLES and you will notice that it is pretty bare - we are going to add our own dimension style here for our drawing.​

• Click NEW on the far right - in the new window give it the name 'DIM' and click CONTINUE

A new window will appear in which we will enter the Dimension's properties. Enter the following information according the tabs at the top of this window:

Symbols and Arrows:
First: Closed filled

Text:
Text Placement -> Vertical: Centered
Text Alignment: Aligned with Dimension Line

Primary Units:
Linear Dimensions -> Unit Format: Architectural
                                -> Precision: 0'-0 1/4"

That's it for now so click -> OK, then CLOSE

Now we are ready to add dimensions to our drawing!

• Change the LAYER to DIM in the LAYERS palette
• Click the LINEAR DIMENSION tool.

• Now we can click inner corners of our rooms that we want to dimension (click not drag) and move our cursor outside the home and click to confirm the placement. This process is very familiar to that used in SketchUp.
• You will probably notice the dimension we drew is very small or not even be able to see it - we need to fix this.
• ​Go to the ANNOTATION palette - click the dropdown menu and choose DIMENSION STYLE, this will open the DIMENSION STYLE MANAGER again.
• Click our DIM style that we created and choose MODIFY on the far right.
  
• Go to the FIT tab and change the 'USE OVERALL SCALE OF:' amount to 50 instead of 1.00
  
• Click OK and CLOSE -> You will now see the changes happen in the drawing.
  
• Continue adding dimensions so that every room has a dimension
  

*** YOU CAN HIDE THE HATCHES IF THEY ARE DISTRACTING WHILE YOU ARE ADDING DIMENSIONS - SIMPLY DROPDOWN THE LAYERS AND CLICK THE LIGHTBULB NEXT TO THE HATCHES LAYER - THIS WILL TURN THE LAYER 'ON' OR 'OFF' TEMPORARILY WHILE YOU WORK ***

Your drawing should now look like the image below

Add the following Note to the right of the drawing using the MULTITEXT - Don't forget to change the size to 1'.

Now our drawing is prepared for PLOTTING

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How to prepare and Plot drawings

Save your work if you haven't done so in awhile.
Click LAYOUT 1 in the bottom left of the AutoCAD window to see your paper space rather than your model space.
Select the Viewport and remove it - we don't need this because we're going to make some changes.

Add a paper size ->  Right Click on the LAYOUT 1 tab and select PAGE SETUP MANAGER
Click MODIFY

Change the Following Settings in this Window:

Printer/plotter:

• Name: DWG to PDF.pc3

Paper size:

• ANSI full bleed A (11.00 x 8.50 Inches)

Plot Area:

• What to plot: Layout

Plot Style Table

• monochrome.ctb

You can now confirm and close this window.

Now we must make a Viewport because we deleted the previous one.

​Click the LAYOUT tab

Choose RECTANGULAR and draw a new viewport INSIDE the dotted line (plot margin) in order to not cut off any information or details when printing.

Once your drawing looks good within the viewport, do the following:

Click the button that looks like a printer on the top left of the AutoCAD window - make sure all the settings are correct as before and ensure monochrome.ctb is selected in order to print in black and white, otherwise it will print in colour and some elements will be very difficult to see - such as the yellow text.

Once you confirm the settings -> Click OK
Save this drawing somewhere and submit it to me for marks.

We're DONE! Hopefully your drawing looks like mine at this point - you can now submit this PDF to the website for marks. Congratulations! This was a big assignment and I hope you learned some new skills completing this floor plan!