From the course: AutoCAD Architecture 2021 Essential Training

Adding wall openings - AutoCAD Architecture Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD Architecture 2021 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Adding wall openings

“

- [Tutor] We're starting a new chapter now and we're going to have a look at wall openings and how we can place wall openings in our architectural models in AutoCAD Architecture. For that reason, we've got a new drawing for you, it's called wall openings.dwg. And you should know the drill by now, download it from the library if you haven't done so already to follow along with the videos in this chapter. Now you'll notice I've already made sure that the drawing is set up in the southwest isometric view. Now, if it's not in that view, you can go up to the View Manager here and select southwest isometric there, like so. Or you can go to your ViewCube, and it's this corner here. Can you see, you've got left, front, top and it's that little corner there. And that'll zoom you in one way or another to the southwest isometric view. Once you're there, zoom in on this wall segment here. So I've selected it to highlight it, get in nice and tight like so so that you can see that wall segment nice and cleanly on the screen like that. Then just hit Escape a couple of times to de-select it if you have selected it. Now, we're going to look at placing a wall opening in that wall segment initially. And then what we're going to do is also add a door and a window as well. Now, you may find that you want to do this in your top view in the plan view, it's not as easy, it's so much easier to see it in an isometric 3D view like this. You can see where things are going to go. And trust me, when you get used to using these isometric views and these 3D views, you'll find it a lot easier to place things like openings, doors, windows, et cetera. So let's look up placing an opening first. Now, I'll just want to place an opening in this particular wall. Now, in order to do that, I can go up here to my Build panel in the Home tab on the ribbon. Now, you'll notice I've got various options, but there's nothing they're actually saying opening. And I don't have actually anything that says opening. What I do is I go here to door, and you can see I've got door opening or door window assembly. Select opening. Now, when you do this, obviously your properties will kick in and you can see there that you've got an opening as you can see there. The width of it is 1000 millimeters, a meter. The height of it is 2000 millimeters, two meters. And it actually tells you A and B. And in the little sketch you've got A and B as well. So it describes everything in a really self explanatory way. Now, you'll notice that there's no selection to browse anything to go to the Styles Browser. That's because we were just putting an opening in a wall. We're not putting a door in, we're not putting a window in, so we don't need any styles it's just a hole in a wall. So, let's go down to our wall here and we select our wall segment like so. Now this is why I like placing it in something like an isometric 3D view, because you'll notice now I can slide that opening along that wall segment. Now, what I've also got there that's really, really useful is you can see there that I've got distances either side. Now, the 1000 distance highlighted in the little black box there is the width of your opening. Now, we don't need to change that but I can press the Tab key on the keyboard now. And can you see, I can Tab between the distances. So can you see there? I've got the right hand distance highlighted in blue and then the left hand distance highlighted in blue. So I'm going to go to the right hand distance there and I'm going to put 5,005 meters from the right hand end of my wall segment. I press Enter to confirm, and there's my opening. I can then move away, hit Escape a couple of times. Now, what you'll notice, is it's placed an opening, it's actually cut that out in the wall for me which is exactly what I want. Now, I'm going to leave that opening there and let's think about placing a door now. So, we go back to the Build panel. Notice I can do this off of the design pallet if I want to. There's doors there, I've got different types of doors, various internal hinged and so on. But the best thing I can do is go up here. Now, the reason I'm going to go up here and go to door here on the Build panel is because I can go to browse like so. So when I click on browse, the good old Styles Browser kicks in, and I can pick any type of door that I want. I can go down the list, and as you can see I've got plenty of different doors I can choose from. I'm just going to go for the boring bog standard here, double click on it like that. I've got the plus symbol there which means I can add the object to the model. I don't need the styles browser open anymore now because it's applied it here to the properties. And as I come in, I've got my pick box and I can pick my wall segment. So I'll click on it like so, and you can see I'm sliding the door like I did with the opening. Now, I'm going to again, use the Tab key and make sure that I pick the right hand distance which at the moment is showing us 2635 millimeters. I'm going to put in a distance there of 3500. Now that's 3500 from the right hand end of my wall segment. When I press Enter, it places the door, I hit Escape a couple of times. There's my door, and the lovely thing about this is it's actually cutting the opening in the wall this time and placing the door and the doorframe and all the style elements in that opening. That's the benefit. The previous one was just an opening. I might just need an opening, it might be an external opening that perhaps goes into a rear passage behind a building perhaps to the bins store or something like that. Let's have a look at windows now as well and look at placing that in here. So there's window. I can place a corner window or a regular window. I'm going to go for window like so. And again, My Properties pops up. I click on Browse and my Styles Browser kicks in and loads up. There's all my different window types that I can use. I'm just going to go for the standard one again. Double click on it like so and close the Styles Browser. Now we know it's been added to the properties. Again, you'll notice I can select the wall segment, the workflow is the same. But you'll notice based on the style of the window, it's made sure that the window is above ground level. You don't want it at ground level obviously it'll look a bit silly. So the idea is, is that within the style, it's got the height that it goes up above the ground level. And again, I'm just going to put a value in there from the right hand end of the wall segment 1500 in the box, press Enter to confirm, hit Escape a couple of times. So you'll notice now that I've got an opening, a door and a window all placed in my wall segment in my architectural model.

Contents