Drawing AEC extended walls

- In this video, we're going to build the walls in this two-dimensional plan and make them as AEC Extended Wall Objects. To do this, we first need to know the thickness of the walls that we will be creating. So, let's find that out. Go to the Create tab under the Helpers category and click the Tape tool. Then, turn on 3D Snap and right-click and change the Snap mode so that only Vertex is on.

Close this dialogue box and let's zoom in over here and let's measure the distance across this wall by dragging from this vertex to the other. Over here, it says it's 5 units in length. I'll press the Delete key on the keyboard to get rid of this Tape Helper Object. Let's also learn how wide the exterior walls are. So, I'm going to drag from here to here and I can see that the length is 8. Okay, so let's make a mental note of that.

The interior walls are 5 inches thick and the exterior walls are 8 inches thick. Okay. Now, let's go to Geometry, AEC Extended, Wall. Now I'm going to specify the width of the exterior wall was 8. So, I'm going to type that in. We'll leave the height as 96 inches which is 8 feet. And, we can set the justification using one of these three options. I'll start with the Right mode and then I'm going to come over here and click once on this corner and I'm off drawing walls now.

So, I'm going to pan over here and click the next corner and then I'm going to hold down the Alt key and drag the mouse wheel to ark rotate, roll the mouse wheel to zoom, and drag the mouse wheel to pan, of course. So then, I'm going to click over here in the corner and just keep going around the building. Building needs exterior walls. And, Snapping the walls to the template that we linked in from AutoCAD. And, finally, when I come back here I'm going to click on the initial point that I started drawing the wall from and we will be prompted to weld the point together, and we want to say Yes.

However, the command does not end and you have to right-click to end the Wall tool. Let's right-click again to get out of that. Okay, now I'd like to create some of the interior walls. So, we'll go back to the Wall tool and specify a width of 5. Then, I'm going to just orbit around here so I can see down here, and I'm going to draw a wall in like that. And then right-click, and then orbit around here, draw another segment in, across there, and another one in here, and another over here.

Now notice, as I do that, I'm generating additional objects. So I'd like to show you another tip for using these objects. Go to the Select Object tool, here, and click on this wall. This is Wall003. Other, the Modify panel, and click on Attach. And then, I'll click on this closet to Attach that together. And, I'll also click on this closet. So now, those objects were merged together and that simplifies things a bit.

I'll also go back to the Create tab and continue drawing in the rest of the walls. And notice how, when I do this, I'm ignoring any openings or doors or windows that may be in the wall because I'm going to add those in later. Let's go over here and draw this wall in, and then we need the bathroom wall as well, and I think we've completed the tiny apartment floor plan and turned everything into a three-dimensional Wall Object.

In the next video, you'll see how you can insert doors and windows into these walls. We'll save this as Apartment03.