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Help getting started

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Message 1 of 6
borre.haugen
448 Views, 5 Replies

Help getting started

Hello folks! 🙂

 

I've been using AutoCAD since, well, for many years now. But i've only learned the basics, and recently found out about the Architecture version which simplifies so much. My projects are usually just for fun, drawing my own home, or planning things, making cutting designs for furniture etc. I've recently made a pretty exact floorplan and facade view of my house in acad (not architecture) for an application to build a terrace outside my house, but this was in plain 2D...

 

Now, I want to start over, using my old drawings as a reference (it got kinda messy regarding layers, blocks, not to mention imperial template which nagged me with annotations, plots etc.), but the first thing I want to know is how to "work smart".

Which template should I use, seeing that acad and acadiso isn't present? I want too use metric as default for all my drawings.

- Should I split it into several drawings inside a project file? (I have no experience with project files). Or should I just use layers and such?

- Can I draw the whole thing as 3D, and still get good floorplans, facade views etc without all the "noise" from other lines as there are no planes to cover the "background noise". I'm not (currently) planning any rendered 3D pictures, but it would be nice to to keep that option available.

- I'm also looking through the content browser (which is also new to me) for electrical installation components as switches, receptacles etc, but can't seem to find it.

 

Or maybe someone could recommend a tutorial, hopefully a metric one. I find little for the Architecture version, and the ones at autodesk website seems to focus on the basics that I know 😞

5 REPLIES 5
Message 2 of 6
David_W_Koch
in reply to: borre.haugen

Welcome to the Discussion Groups.  You did not mention what version you are using, but the following should apply equally to any relatively recent release.

 

The AutoCAD acad.dwt and acadiso.dwt template file ship with AutoCAD Architecture [ACA], but may not be in the default template file location.  You should have a subfolder called AutoCAD Templates that has these and other "vanilla" AutoCAD templates.  That said, you will be better served using an ACA template, as that will have the full display system and other settings that will make using ACA much easier.  For metric units, the Aec Model (Metric Ctb).dwt or Aec Model (Metric Stb).dwt would be a good place to start for "model" files.  For "sheet" files, Aec Sheet (Metric Ctb).dwt and Aec Sheet (Metric Stb).dwt would likewise be a good place to start.  Depending upon your location, you may have localized content, including template files, that are optimized for the typical way of working in your area.  If so, these may be better choices for you.

 

In case you are not aware, the "Ctb" and "Stb" in the template file names refers to the plot style type that each uses; Ctb plot styles are color-dependent plot styles - the color assigned to an graphic object determines how it plots.  Stb plot styles are named plot styles and are assigned independently of the object's color.  In both types, the plot style (or color) can be assigned directly to the object or display component, or it can be assigned "ByLayer" (the object's/component's layer is assigned a plot style/color, and that is applied to the object/component) or, for nested objects like the sub-objects within a block reference or the display components of an ACA object, "ByBlock", in which case the plot style/color assigned to the nested item is inherited from that assigned to the parent object.

 

I am not 100% clear on what you mean by "project file".  ACA has a Drawing Management feature (Project Browser and Project Navigator), which is meant to aid in the organization of all of the drawings that create a single project, as well as make creating project files and maintaining relationships between external references easier.  This approach assumes that you will have multiple drawing files to create the "project".  Some of the people who participate in these Discussion Groups and do residential work fell this is overkill for the scale of the work they do and have developed workflows that allow them to work in a single file, even for multi-floor projects.  Others find working "as intended" to be easier.  And there are others who do not use the Drawing Management feature at all, and manually manage the files and manually set up and maintain external references.

 

By making use of the Display System and the elevation and section generation tools, you should find that you can work in 3D and still get the graphics needed for the 2D documentation that is still the primary means of communicationg design intent to others.

 

In the Content Browser, you should have a number of tool catalogs.  Unless you have a catalog with localized content (which may have more appropriate symbols for your area), you can find electrical symbols in the Design Tool Catalog - Metric, under the Electrical Services category.  There are subcategories for Communications, Fluorescent, Luminaires, Power Outlets and Switches.

 

As for tutorials, you can download Metric tutorials in a number of languages.  The most recent appears to be for the 2010 version, but these should work for more recent versions as well.  There are also tutorials for the 2009 and 2008 releases online; prior to that, I believe the tutorials shipped with the installation disk.  You can find the 2010 tutorials here.  Beyond that, there are books (generally for previous releases) that can help provide a deeper understanding of the program.  You can also search here to see if others have already asked a question you have or post additional questions.


David Koch
AutoCAD Architecture and Revit User
Blog | LinkedIn
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Message 3 of 6
borre.haugen
in reply to: David_W_Koch

Thanks for a long great list of answers. I have been playing a bit around since last time, and it starts to make more sense to me now. Still, it's a bigger leap from standard AutoCAD than i expected. Also, i now run 2014, i used older versions of "vanilla".

 

However, earlier i've been using a ugly simple title block that was basically a copy/pase, and i dindn't feel totaly in control over it. I googled about, and found a lot of people saying it should be placed in modelspace, and not in the layout (As i've done it earlier). I can't see the benefit of having it in modelspace, as i might be using diffent scales on my prints, and sometimes only want to print maybe one room instrad of the whole floor plan. It sounds even messier with a 3D drawing, maybe a clever solution that i'm unable to comprehend atm? I've also read about the x-ref, but that seems more applicable to companies who have a lot of drawing on their hands.

 

I will get to work now, and pop in when i hit more bumps on the road 🙂

Message 4 of 6
David_W_Koch
in reply to: borre.haugen

Way back in the day (before Release 11) , there was no paper space (or layouts), and everything went into model space, including the title block.  Early versions of paper space were somewhat difficult to work in (every change in view triggered a REGEN; there was only "one" paper space, etc.), which may have discouraged some from moving their title blocks to paper space.

 

Those issues are long gone, and now you can have multiple layouts (if you so choose).  There are still some who want everything in model space, including the title block, but I would say the vast majority make use of layouts for composing sheets.

 

External references are a great way to break a project up so that multiple users can work on it at the same time.  It also makes it easier to have (nearly) pure model files, with the items that actually get built, and separate sheet files, where drawing-specific annotation gets placed and title blocks (in the layout) get set up.  Separating the annotation can greatly reduce the number of layers you need for annotation, and also makes sharing the "background" files with other disciplines easier (assuming that you would have stripped out your discipline-specific annotation before send the files off to the other disciplines).

 

If you are a one-person act and do not need to share your files with others, then an all-in-one-file approach may make more sense.


David Koch
AutoCAD Architecture and Revit User
Blog | LinkedIn
EESignature

Message 5 of 6
borre.haugen
in reply to: David_W_Koch

Thanks 🙂 I suppose I better work out a nice title block then. I saw a few tutorials where they insert a nice title block (I think it was some imperial sized one) that seemed nice with only on horizontal line at the bottom, where you fill out all the info upon inserting the block. I never found that one, suppose it's part of the tutorials.

 

What my current project is, is to draw my whole house in complete 3D with the auto functions of Architecture, and I've come across a few challenges. The width of some of the outer walls are different as some of them has gotten added insinuation from the inside. When I try to join two walls with different width, a line is displayed on the outside at their point of merging in the 3D view, how can I eliminate that one?

 

The roof in the living room has an angle of 10°, while the roof outside has a bigger angle, 30-35°. How to I edit the walls to get this extra line to make an angle of the inner walls?

 

In the basement, I have a combination of concrete and wooden walls, where the concrete is the lower 30 cm on the one wall, and the wooden part above has a lesser width. How do I combine this?

 

I suppose it doesn't matter if I choose to have a Roof line (E) or a Floor line (F) to make the floor separation for my two floors... Thanks for all your help so far.

 

EDIT: I also find it weird that I seem to lack some of the properties for various elements, like when inserting a wall, I can only input E and F. Where are A, B and C? I also lack some properties on other elements. I can usually use the command line, but that's not as intuitive, especially when learning this program. See screenshot. 

Message 6 of 6
David_W_Koch
in reply to: borre.haugen


@borre.haugen wrote:

Thanks 🙂 I suppose I better work out a nice title block then. I saw a few tutorials where they insert a nice title block (I think it was some imperial sized one) that seemed nice with only on horizontal line at the bottom, where you fill out all the info upon inserting the block. I never found that one, suppose it's part of the tutorials.

 

What my current project is, is to draw my whole house in complete 3D with the auto functions of Architecture, and I've come across a few challenges. The width of some of the outer walls are different as some of them has gotten added insinuation from the inside. When I try to join two walls with different width, a line is displayed on the outside at their point of merging in the 3D view, how can I eliminate that one?


 

If you are looking at a "live" view of your 3D Model in an elevation view, I am not certain you can get rid of the line between Wall segments. If you are generating a 2D Section/Elevation object to show the elevation, then you could edit the linework to remove the line between two walls. You could also edit the Material Definition to indicate that common materials should be merged in 2D Section/Elevations (on the Other tab), but I have read that doing so has generated other problems for some users.


@borre.haugen wrote:

The roof in the living room has an angle of 10°, while the roof outside has a bigger angle, 30-35°. How to I edit the walls to get this extra line to make an angle of the inner walls?


 

You will have to use two separate items to model this condition, one for the outer roof and one for the inner ceiling.


@borre.haugen wrote:

In the basement, I have a combination of concrete and wooden walls, where the concrete is the lower 30 cm on the one wall, and the wooden part above has a lesser width. How do I combine this?


 

Wall components do not have to extend from Wall Bottom to Wall Top. On the Components tab of the Wall Style, you can specify the Bottom and Top Elevations of each component by an Offset from the Wall Bottom, Baseline, Base Height or Wall Top. This would allow you to define a Wall that has a concrete component of a particular width that runs from Wall Bottom (no offset) to 30 cm above the Baseline, and then define additional ("wooden") components that start 30 cm above the Baseline and run to Wall Top, the total depth of which could be less than that of the concrete component and could fall within the concrete component's width.


@borre.haugen wrote:

I suppose it doesn't matter if I choose to have a Roof line (E) or a Floor line (F) to make the floor separation for my two floors... Thanks for all your help so far.

 

EDIT: I also find it weird that I seem to lack some of the properties for various elements, like when inserting a wall, I can only input E and F. Where are A, B and C? I also lack some properties on other elements. I can usually use the command line, but that's not as intuitive, especially when learning this program. See screenshot. 


 

Well, that is odd. I see "A" Width, "B" Base height, "C" Length and Justify above Offset, under the Dimensions subcategory under the Basic category on the Design tab when placing a Wall. Sometimes "A" will not be editable, if the Wall is defined with all fixed-width components. And "C" is not directly editable, but does change dynamically as you move the cursor after you have indicated the start point. You also appear to be missing several properties under the General subcategory. I have Description, Style, Bound spaces, Cleanup automatically and Cleanup group definition above Segment type. There may be an issue with your installation if you are not seeing all of these properties.


David Koch
AutoCAD Architecture and Revit User
Blog | LinkedIn
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