Fitting together the pieces of the puzzle

In this lesson, you will discover that you are missing a needed dimension in this sketch. This will necessitate drawing the rest of the floor plan from another angle. This situation is typical of many measurements taken in the field. It's a bit like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. Don't get stuck if you can't find a particular piece. Improvise. So in this case, we have a dimension right here that says 6 and 1 half inches, but that's going in the vertical direction. We don't really know how far it is from the door opening to the wall, so let's approach this plan from the other side. Let's zoom out and move all these objects up out of the way. Then go to the Insert tab, and click the Clip tool on the Reference panel. Select the image and choose Delete.

Now, we can see the whole image again. Press Enter, select the image again. Make a new boundary, rectagular. And then, select the image from this corner down to about here where we are at the French doors. Now, I'll move the plan over so that we can see the plan and the sketch on the screen at the same time. Okay, I'll go back to the Home tab, and choose offset. And let's enter a 45 and a quarter, and offset this window down. And then, I don't know how wide this is here, but I do know the total width of both windows together.

So, let's use that value. That's 96 and a quarter. I'll offset this down and then enter, enter to end and repeat the Offset command. 45 and a quarter, Enter. Click this line and click it up, and now we have that distance. I'll go ahead and draw in a couple of lines here and I'll draw them down, oops, I'll say Undo and go down here like that, that's some arbitrary distance. You can always trim or fill in lines later, when we have other dimensions input.

Now, it looks like I can draw a line across here that measures 78 units across. This is upside down here in the sketch. And I need to move that down 23 and 3 quarter inches. So, I will chose Move, select this Enter, click a point, move it down and type 23.75, Enter.

Then I can use the Fill It tool to join these two lines in to a corner, scroll down a bit, and then I need to draw a rectangle that represents this post that's 6x8. So, I'll use the Rectangle tool and I'll draw it over here off to the side. I'll type in at 8,6, Enter. Then move the rectangle over from its endpoint to match up with the endpoint of the wall. Next, let's stretch this line down a bit.

Let's assume that all the walls are 5 inches thick, so offset, 5 Enter, click this line down. I need to trim that away. Trim, Enter, click right there, and then I will draw another line down here. I don't know how far, then I am going to offset this 67 and a quarter. So, I will type 0, Enter, 67.25, Enter, then I will click this line and click on the right side. Enter, Enter again to repeat offset with a value of five to represent the thickness of that wall, Enter, Enter, and then 12 and a quarter to offset this line down.

Then I'll use Fill It to join these together. Again, to join those together. Again, to join these together. And then finally, up here, I think I'll just use a Grip Edit to move this down perpendicular, and press Escape. Zoom back out, and then we have an opening that's 30 and a quarter, offset 30.25.

Draw a line by typing L+Enter, down, 25 inches. That will allow us to complete this area. Can offset the wall 5 inches. And then fill it, these edges, together. I'll click these two lines, press Enter, and click these two lines. Now the door opening, it doesn't say how far it is from the wall, so I'm going to assume that it's 5 inches away.

I'll draw a line right here perpendicular to the outer wall. Then move Enter, L+Enter to select the last object I created, Enter again. Click and move it down 5 inches, and then Offset 32 and 1 half. And then, click and click below, Trim, Enter, crossing window select. And then, stretch this line over. I'll zoom out, and I don't know how far it's going to go at least that far. And then, we will draw another line down here, and then I will offset a distance of 5 inches up and fill it, these two lines together to make a corner. Actually, we have a couple of more things we can put in right here. I'll draw in a line from here down.

And then move last over 4 inches, and then Offset 34.75 and offset this to the right, and then again 36. Offset that over to represent the door. Now, I need to see more of the sketch, so I'm going to zoom out, move all of the things that I've drawn up. I'm going to place them right about here.

And then, I'm going to go back to the Insert tab and choose clip, select this, and then delete. Again, select the image, make a new boundary, rectangular, and I'll select this part that I want to retain. And I can zoom in, it looks like I need to offset so I go back to the Home tab. Click Offset and type in 36 to offset this line over to represent that second French door, and then again Enter, Enter. 31.5, Enter, and then it's hard to see the cursor because it's white on the screen.

Click and click on the right side. It looks like the first step is 155 inches from this wall, so I'll go ahead and offset it. Offset 155, Enter. Click this line, and then click on the right side. So, now we have this stair located. We can then draw in this wall, it looks like. So, let's go ahead and offset 9 and a quarter from the stair to the left.

And that's going to represent the edge of this wall here. So, I'll draw a line up. And it looks like it's 4 and 3 quarters of an inch thick, so 4.75 up. And then, I'll just go ahead and erase this temporary line below the wall, and draw a new line in right there. And it's going to go over 29 and 1 half to the edge of this partial height wall.

And then, this is going to go up some distance. I don't know how far. I'll just click an arbitrary point. And then, I'll go ahead and draw another line here over, and I'll offset 5 inches this wall to the left. And then fill it, these two lines together. Now, these two posts are on the same beam. So obviously, they are horizontally on the same line. So, I'm going to draw a line here right across horizontally.

And then, I'm going to go ahead and draw a rectangle from some arbitrary point. And I'll type at 6,6. So, I have a 6 inch square post. And then, I will move that up so that it is on that line. Another thing I can tell from the sketch is that the right end of the post seems to be flush with this wall. So, if I extend the wall up to this line, then I'll have an intersection point where I can place the post.

Let's move that over, right there. We also have a dimension from the lower edge of the post to the edge of the wall here. Let's make sure that's correct. I'll draw a line from this edge down, 35.75 down. And it's not correct. It looks like it goes to this side. We have to move these objects up.

And then, let's move them again. Move previous to grab the same things that I moved just a moment ago. And then, I'll grab them from this intersection point which I need to snap to. And then, move them down to the endpoint of the line. Now, the dimension is correct. I'll extend the stair line up and then fill it, these lines together. Actually that's not correct.

Undo and erase this temporary line. And fill it, these two lines together. There we go. Now, we're almost there. We have to input the width of the stairs which is 31 and 3 quarter inches. So, Offset 31.75, Enter. Offset this line to the right. And then offset again 5 inches to represent the thickness of the wall.

Now, I think we have everything we need to complete the puzzle as it were. I am going to type IM and right-click on the cottage sketch and unload it temporarily. Then I'm going to go ahead and fill it, these lines together. And again, these lines together. Again, up here, I'll fill up these lines together. I will finally extend this line up to meet the other line.

And I would trim by holding down Shift with the Extend tool, and get rid of that line that goes across the space. Again, we need to trim away this line and raise this final little segment. And I've completed all the lines for the cottage project. I'll just move them up out of the way of the sketch. And there you have it. By following my drawing process, you will learn how one approaches challenges and solves them on the fly. As you draw this plan yourself, see if you can find other ways to fit the plan together Given the dimensions in the sketch