Steps to Making a Basic AutoCAD Drawing

Since I am here drawing away rooms I should explain my steps and methods on how I make the drawings for 25Live. Keep in mind this coming from someone who learned how to use AutoCAD on their own spare time. So to anyone reading this who might be a perfectionist, keep in mind this is a basic how to. Also the idea of something being basic is subjective, at least for me I see these drawings as basic.

First of all let's assume one ideas before the drawing process for a room. You must at least have everything within the room measured to some sort of accuracy, of course no one is perfect so there some room for error not to mention no human lives are at stake because of these errors. So anyways here is the example drawing I am using for this how to. It is Hayden 402 the Biology Lab.

Next to is to think of a scale to downsize the drawing to. In the case for this project I did a "1 square is equal to 1 foot" scale to make it easier not only for me but for people who might want to see the original AutoCAD drawings. So for an 8 foot whiteboard it will get easily translated to 8 squares because of this scale. Now that you thought of a scale you can start drawing, the drawing actually starts.

I usually tend to Layer my drawings in order to keep it organized and to some freeze some important lines that I don't want to be deleted incase if I make a mistake. I go to the layer properties manager in order to set it up. Here is my setup for the layers.

Starting with the Line tool, for the floor plans I tend to create gaps to where windows and door will eventually belong. If necessary I also draw a projector if the room has one, or any other fixed object in the room, but for this example this room does not have a projector.

Now you could do this if you want to, but I tend to offset the walls using the offset tool, in order to make it look like the drawing has some thickness to it hence why there is another line around the walls. Also you can color code your layers it is kind of a two fold reason to why I do this. One it is aesthetically pleasing to my eyes, and to differentiate many things in the room. As you can see for the windows they are are a different color for the floor plans. The windows are made through the line tool.

Then voila after using proper layering and some use of the line and trim tool here is the completed drawing.

For the door I used a line tool to create the actual door, offset it to 0.15 in the prompt, then I used the arc tool set to 3 point to create the motion to where the door moves. The trim tool was used in order to size down the arc since it was "spilling out" of the drawing.

So now one could see the work I go through once I amass all the drawings I have. I hope some you learned through the working process that goes on my head and on my computer.