Learn how to create accurate and professional technical drawings using a range. From constructing a rectangle to adding intricate details like oven doors and temperature control knobs, this article walks through the process in a detailed, step-by-step manner.
Key Insights
- The creation process begins with constructing a square rectangle of 2'6 by 2'6 dimensions, positioned 1 inch away from 0,0 on the graph. Adjustments for color and current layer are also carried out.
- Adding details to the range involves creating horizontal lines at the top to indicate the oven door, and designing the temperature control knobs by drawing and copying circles of 1 and 1 1⁄2 inch diameter.
- Baseline dimensions, often used in construction documents, industrial drawings, and mechanical trades, prove useful in the copy command operation when adding multiple objects of the same size to the drawing.
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In this video, we will work on the range. Let's go File, New, use the template, File, Save.
This is named Range, Save, and let's go Layer Properties, make our new layer a-fixed, color of 120, and let's make it our current layer. Again, when I check the handout, I see that this is a rectangle, also a square, of 2'6 × 2'6. This rectangle is also 1 inch away from 0,0. We've done this before.
Let's jump right in. Rectangle, I'll click the screen to start, D, Enter, and 2'6 is 30 inches, so I'll go 30, Enter, 30, Enter, and then I need to click in my quadrant, click, zoom extents, and I'll roll out. Now we can move this midpoint to the absolute value of 0,1 to move it 1 inch away from 0,0. For this project, I will turn on my endpoint and midpoint running object snaps, so I will move back to here, turn off intersection, turn on endpoint and midpoint.
So let's go Move, move my rectangle, Enter to say that I am done selecting objects, and my running object snaps will show me my midpoint, and I'll move that to 0,1, Enter. Zoom extents, Control-S to save. Now, when we look at the handout, we can see that there are three distinct elements we need to add.
Some horizontal lines at the top of the range, representing how the oven door would be at the top, and then an angle or a space with the temperature control knobs. Then we have four burners in these four sections of the range. The first thing we can add are those horizontal lines at the top, which is an offset of 2 and an offset of 4. Let's explode our rectangle, and now we can make our offset, and I know that 4 is a multiple of 2, and because offset keeps us in the command, it might be faster to use one offset command and then erase one of the lines.
Let's give that a shot. Offset, my distance will be 2, Enter. I'll pick this top line, show down and click, pick that line, down and click, and then pick this line again, down and click, Enter to say that I'm done.
We used the same offset to create the lines that we wanted here and here, but this line was extra construction geometry. We can select that line and hit delete. Control S to save.
Next, let's take a look at putting in those temperature control knobs in this section of the drawing. We can see that they are all circles of 1 and 1⁄2 inch diameter, and when I see that many objects of all the same size, I think we're going to use the copy tool. Also, you'll see on your handout an interesting way to draw dimensions.
This is called baseline dimensions, and this is used often when drawing construction documents or working drawings or shop drawings for many mechanical trades in the field, or even mechanical or industrial engineering drawings. In this case, the baseline dimension helps us with our copy command, but to copy the circle, we first need to draw one in place. We can see that the circles are four inches away from this line, and the copy is coming from this endpoint, this edge of the range.
So I'm going to draw my first circle four inches below this corner point. Of course, we can do this with tracking. So I'll go to my circle, T-R-A, Enter, and my first tracking point will be the endpoint here.
I'll make sure my mouse is going down, and you can barely see the yellow dashed lines on top of our green line. And I will type in 4, Enter, and for this example, that is where I would like my circle to be drawn. So I can hit ENTER again, D for diameter, Enter, and 1.5, Enter.
Now that can be our reference circle for all of our copies. And this is a fairly simple workflow now that we see all of our dimensions in baseline form. If you had your dimensions drawn in a continuous or continuous dimension string, you would need to do a little bit of mental math to copy these all from the same reference object.
Baseline is really helping us out in this instance. Before I copy, I'm going to come down and make sure that my ortho option is turned on, and that way I am locked in to make either horizontal or vertical copies. So I can go to my copy tool, select my objects, Enter to say that I'm done selecting, and because this is a distance and direction copy, I do not need to choose any specific location as long as I'm showing the correct direction and typing in a distance.
So I will click anywhere on the screen and show the direction to the right. Now, I can simply type in the dimensions one at a time, hitting Enter after each distance, and my copies will go to the right place. So this will be 4, Enter, 8, Enter, 1 foot 4, again I'm using the apostrophe, Enter, 1 foot 7, Enter, 1 foot 11, Enter, and 2 feet 2, Enter.
You can see those distances one at a time on your command prompt. Now to say that you're done without typing anything in, hit ENTER and Control S to save. The last thing I want to do in this video is erase our reference circle, so I will go to the eraser tool, pick this circle, and hit ENTER.
Let's Control S to save, and in the next video we will add the burners onto our range.
