3 pane window problem

[Anonymous]

I have a window seen from the front- a simple rectangle. Within it there are 3 smaller rectangles representing 3 glass panes.

I need them to be distributed evenly so that:

- the distance between the left edge of the window and the left edge of the 1st pane is equal to

  the distance between the right edge of the window and the right edge of the last (3rd) pane;

- and both should be equal to

  the distance between each adjacent glass panes (1st to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd).

How should I start this?

[David_W_Koch]

One way would be to use a Door/Window Assembly. This blog post discusses how to get equal lights.

[Anonymous]

Thank you; but there may be times when I don't have  advanced options like Mullion Offsets available and then I may need to resort to other ways of solving the problem.

I'd like to learn how to do it the old way, without ready-made constructs (Door, Window etc.); when the window and panes are simple rectangles or plines. What do I do then?

[David_W_Koch]

Are you trying to draw something like this?

If you know the overall frame dimension and the width of the mullion, subtract four mullion widths from the overall frame dimension and divide by three to determine clear light dimension.  If the dimesions are such that the clear light dimension is not a whole number (as it was in the image above), you can have AutoCAD do the math by entering the width as the total clear light dimension divided by three (63/3 in the example above).

[Anonymous]

Yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to draw.
But what I wanted is to know how exactly you drew that window, step-by-step. Of course, as I said, using only lines and such, no Door/Window Assembly etc.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

The following Screencast makes use of closed Polylines, as that is what I used to create the image posted yesterday.  The same thing could be done with Lines, but the editing would be a little more complicated.  Or, if you really want lines, you could explode the closed Polylines.

Here is the step-by-step:

1. Draw a Polyline rectangle representing the outer edge of the outer frame.
2. Offset that rectangle by the width of the frame/mullion, to the inside of the rectangle.
3. Grip edit the inner rectangle to represent one of the equal lights. The left, top and bottom sides of the rectangle are already where they need to be. Use the middle stretch grip on the right side to reposition the right side from the midpoint of the left outer frame. It needs to be offset a distance equal to [one frame/mullion width + one equal light width]. This distance is equal to [(overall frame width - frame width)/3]. In this case, that is (71 - 2)/3, or 63/3.
4. Copy the edited inner rectangle, starting from the midpoint of the outer frame, perpendicular to the right side of the inner rectangle. Create a second copy, perpendicular to the right side of the first copy.

In this case, it would have been easy to calculate that 63/3 = 21 and enter 21 directly in Step 3. I chose to demonstrate that AutoCAD can do the math for you, which will be handy when the results are not whole numbers.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the clear answer.

[David_W_Koch]

CORRECTION TO TYPOS IN MY PREVIOUS POST:

Replace 63/3 with 69/3.  [The (71-2)/3 is correct.]

Replace 63/3 = 21 with 69/3 = 23, and note that you could "enter 23 directly in Step 3", not "enter 21 directly in Step 3".

Post in haste, repent at leisure.