Adjusting Window Shutters and Adding Brick Pattern: A CAD Tutorial

We have just completed populating our front elevation with our windows and shutters, but the Architect in me is going, hmm, I would like to make a change. I have given these shutters to one of my staff to provide them, but I don't really like the fact that the shutters come down so far. I would rather that the bottom of the shutters align with the bottom of the brick.

Now, if I type DI for distance, I can see that I have a distance of four inches here at the bottom for the soldier course of the window. So what I'm going to do is a few things. I'm going to first go into the rename command, so R-E-N-A-M-E, rename.

And I want to rename a block, and I want to rename the block window shutter, CTRL + C, CTRL + V. Instead of 1650, I'm going to let it be 1648, meaning one foot six inches wide, four feet eight inches tall. So I've renamed the block.

If I type list, you can see that it's now a block named window shutter 1648. I now want to modify the block. So I will double-click on the block, and you can see I'm in the edit block definition table.

It says window shutter 1648. I'm going to go OK. I'm now going to stretch crossing, because remember, my base point is up here at the top.

So stretch crossing, enter, arbitrary base point, ortho on, slide up four, stretch crossing, slide up two, and I'm going to close the block editor, save my changes. So you can see that my shutters have now slid up by the four inches, because the base points have maintained the same definition, but I've made them smaller at the bottom. So again, what I've done is I took a block that I had previously inserted, and I renamed the block, then I double-clicked on the block to go into the block editor, and I made my appropriate changes.

So what's happening is I have a copy of this window shutter 1648 in my local drawing, but not on my hard drive, on my C drive. So I'm now going to type W block, which means right block, and it's going to say, what am I trying to do? Well, I want to take the block, whose name is window shutter 1648, and I want to save it out on the hard drive. You can see that it wants to be saving it in this default folder right here.

I want to place it on my C drive, under CAD 301, and go save. And now I'm going to go OK. So one of the nice things now is that if I go Insert, Block Insert, go choose Browse, now I have two window shutters.

I have our original 1650 and the new 1648. So I will choose Cancel, Cancel, back off, CTRL + S to save. I'm going to go ahead and bring in the garage door.

So Block Insert. I'll go to Browse. It's going to be a door.

It will be the 8070, eight feet wide, 70 high. Specify insertion point on screen. OK.

And I'm going to pop it in right at the intersection of there. I'm going to double-check by clicking on the block, and you can see that it is above the ground line. So look down here, and you can see it's above the ground line.

And it's sort of nice if we have our driveway and the bottom of the garage door at the same area. So I'm just going to go ahead and say move the block from the intersection to the endpoint. And then I'm going to copy this block.

I can say from this point here over to this point here, escape, and then erase crossing, and I will erase out the guidelines that I used on the side of the door elevation. One thing that's nice, too, is that we're seeing the garage door. You can see the four panels.

See the line that delineates the panels? So four panels. I have three solid panels, and these three little lines up here represent glazing. So I have glass at the top of the garage, so I can be in the garage working and have a little bit of daylight.

And then we also have the swing direction. So this is saying that the door is hinging from the top. This, again, is a center-to-line type.

I'm going to back off, CTRL + S to save, and now I would like to bring in the front door. So I will go Insert, Block Insert, go to Browse. It's going to be a door.

It will be the pair of the 306-8s. Specify insertion point on screen. I will pop it in right up there.

And this is my 6'8", which is the height of the door, and we're all fine and dandy there. I'm going to go to Home tab and erase out the guidelines on either side of the door. CTRL + S to save.

And what I'd like to do next is bring in my entry lights. So I'm going to go Insert, Block Insert, go to Browse. I'm going to slide down.

It's called Porch Light. So I'm going to do that. Specify insertion point on screen.

I'm going to begin by popping it in at the intersection right here. And then I'm going to move it up 5'6", and that's a comfortable height. And now I'm going to mirror the fixture.

So I will go to Home tab, Mirror. You know, I'm going to move it up a little bit more. Move this guy up four inches.

Because I think that the 5'6 was maybe a little bit too low. So again, I inserted it, end of here, I went up 5'6", and I went up four more. Again, I'm just trying to give a nice lighting as we come into the house.

So I will mirror the light fixture from the end of the door straight down. And you can see that the door is not quite centered. So I'm now going to move the light fixture from the insertion base point of the fixture, because it's a block, perpendicular to the garage wall.

And that's all fine. Now, you can see, though, that the gutter is in front of the fixture. The fixture is in the back.

The gutter is in front of it. So what I need to do is I need to explode the block and then do some cleanup. So I'm going to go Explode and choose the block.

It put it back on layer 0. I will select the geometry. You can see it said it's on multiple layers. I'm going to put everything on A Medium.

Escape. Zoom in. I'm going to trim.

These are my cutting edges. Enter. I'm going to go F Enter for Fence.

Pick on this point. F3 to take my running O Snap off. F8 to take my Ortho off.

And I did my fence in through there. And then I'm going to have to go in, trim, and do some cleanup. Trim here.

Do some cleanup. So I'm going to go back to Trim. Here's my cutting edge.

I've gotten that fine. Trim. Clean that up.

Trim. Clean this up. Yes, I know I'm being fussy.

But it's better to be fussy than to have the boss come back later on and say, why didn't you do this? And again, I need to erase that segment out. I'm going to zoom back. Zoom Extents.

Zoom in. CTRL + S to save. I believe I can now erase out this upper header line that we were using.

And once again, save. What I'd like to do next is to put the bricks on the facade of the building. But I know that I need to have a special brick treatment here under the door.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a line from the edge of the door straight down. And a line from the edge of the door straight down. I'm going to trim at the ground line.

So I have my special area already reserved right in through here for my future bricks. We'll come back and tackle this after we put the bricks on the facade of the building. So the bricks will be on the pattern layer.

A-pattern. We're going to go to Hatch. When we were using our roof shake before, we're now going to use a common brick pattern.

So I'm expanding the list. I'm going to go to AR Brick Standard. I'm going to pick in here.

Right now that looks fine. I'm going to pick in here and pick in here. I'll pick down here, over here, and also up in this area here.

So everything is looking fine. However, do you see the strangeness that I have going on for my bricks right there? So I'm going to move my origin base point to the intersection of down here. And now I have a nicer brick pattern happening where you can actually see the end of a brick at the edge.

Enter to say I'm done. CTRL + S to save. I'm going to come back and pan over here.

Go back into Hatch. Select this area. Select there and down here.

Now once again, you can see that we have the interesting edge conditions happening at the side of the building. We would never veneer a building that way. So I'm setting the origin back to the corner.

Because on the edge of the building, we would see the edges of the brick veneer just like that and enter. Now what you're probably noticing is, wait a minute, you're running around changing the origin for the different brick patterns in the different segments. That's totally fine.

This is a graphic representation. It's more important that we have normalcy in how a brick pattern begins at an edge condition because we're simply telling the contractor, put bricks here. I'm going to go into this area over here in the bedroom.

I want to move the downspout a little bit to the right. So I'm going to say move the downspout arbitrary base point ortho on two inches to the right. And then I have to do my move window for that two inches to the right.

I'm going to come back and hatch this area. Go back to hatch. Choose this region.

I'm going to choose over here to the right of the gutter, down here and here. And boy, we're in luck. Look how the pattern repeat is nicely working at the edges of the building.

Go to the garage. Go to hatch. I'll choose my regions.

And you have to remember to catch all these little regions. Not overly thrilled with my edge condition. Set origin.

Go to the bottom there. It looks fine. Close hatch creation.

CTRL + S to save. Now I need to go ahead and draw a soldier course down here below the door. So I'm going to zoom in.

I'm going to draw a line. I'm going to say from here straight down. Bricks are normally four inches by eight inches.

So I'm going to move this entity two inches to the right and offset by four inches this. Trim. Here's my cutting edge.

Get rid of these guys. Trim here. So I have that happening.

Now what's happening is I'm actually showing the four by eight component. I don't know that I like it laid up this way. So I'm going to move this one inch to the left.

Move this one inch to the right. That sort of looks fine. And then I'm just going to offset by two inches.

I'm going to press F3 to get my running o-snap off. This is what they call soldier coursing. And it's where you're seeing the edge of the brick.

I have some strangeness happening here. I can always have my contractor cut that one on the edge. Then I'm going to mirror.

M-I for mirror. I'm going to choose this guy. From the end of here, F3, straight down.

When I'm looking at it now, I'm not overly thrilled. Because if I look here, I have a distance of one inch. So I will erase this one segment and move these so that they're now going, arbitrary base point, one inch to the left.

Now I have my soldier coursing appropriately detailed everywhere along the facade of the building. So I can now CTRL + S to save. I can go back to my A301, update the XRef, CTRL + S to save.

If I'd like, I can type plot. I can do my preview. It looks fine.

You can see again my pen weight. Now, we were carrying on earlier about making sure we had a different pen weight for the roof so it pops out as opposed to the larger roof which recedes. On the brick, I was maintaining the same pen weight.

The reason is I have my detail, my pop-out detail, occurring in the roof and the sides of the wall. The brick pattern is representative. And there's really no need to have different pen weights going on for the brick patterns themselves.

OK, so we've now wrapped up the elevation. What I'd like to do next is to come back and start doing some keynoting. And we're almost finished.

And I hope you're having a good time. I hope you're also understanding that I'm showing you how most of us adjust and modify the CAD work as we go along in the construction documentation process. We don't always know all the answers right up front.

We do our best. We're constantly following up with ourselves and paying attention to detail. So I'll see you in a few seconds.