Learn how to develop detailed floor plans using specific tools and commands in computer-aided design software. This article provides comprehensive step-by-step instructions from building walls to doors, closets, and bathroom spaces, with careful attention to dimensions and line work.
Key Insights
- The process begins with creating the bathroom space by offsetting specific dimensions, ensuring the dimensions are read correctly and attention is paid to which face is being offset. Careful line work, trimming, and saving the file at each step is essential.
- The closet spaces are developed using similar techniques. Dimensions are offset, special attention is paid to the side of the face, and lines are extended, trimmed, and saved frequently to ensure accuracy.
- Doorways and closet spaces are developed by offsetting by specific dimensions, moving lines in the right direction, and trimming as necessary. Again, frequent saving of the file is essential to prevent loss of work and to keep the work organized.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
I'm going to now begin developing the bathroom, this bathroom here. So I'm going to offset by five foot six and a half. Again, read the dimensions, make sure I'm paying attention to which face is being offset.
So I can see that the dimension string is showing the five six from upper face to upper face. I'm going to similarly do the lower face, trim crossing, and pick in through here. Save the file, start working on the closet in this bedroom.
Offset by six foot ten, again paying attention to the side of the face. Offset by six, offset by two foot nine, and again it's the upper face, by six. Fill it, trim, save the file here.
I can see that I have a one foot four dimension here, offset by one foot four. Move this line down, extend up to here, trim crossing, and clean this guy up. I can see that my distance from the end of here to the end of here is five feet.
Trim crossing, clean this guy up, save the file there. When I'm looking at this opening here, I'm going to look at the opening down here in this closet. I'm going to offset by ten inches and move this line to the right.
Extend to here this line, trim crossing, save the file. Do the distance. I just typed in DI, so I'm seeing that this is also five feet there.
I'm getting this done. I'm saving the file. I'm going to offset by three inches and by two foot six, and move crossing.
These lines over, trim, crossing, and crossing. Control S to save. Now it's time to start working on this area.
So while I'm here, I'm going to work on this part of the bathroom. I'm going to offset by five foot seven. Again, looking at the handout and paying attention to which sides need to be offset down.
Trim crossing, clean this up, clean this up, save the file. My interior door in the bathroom will be two foot four. So I'm going to offset by three inches and by two foot four, and move these lines straight down.
Save the file, trim, clean it up, clean it up, clean it up. Offset by three inches, by two foot four. I'm going to move crossing here to here, trim crossing, pick, pick, pick, and pick.
Control S to save. Now we've gotten this area blocked out. I'm going to begin working on the master bedroom.
You can see that I'm going to have my bulk storage in this area. I'm going to select these lines, pick on the grips with ortho on, and bring them over. I'm going to offset by six foot seven, outside going to the left, by six inches to the left.
So here's my bedroom wall right here. I'm going to extend to this line, these lines. And so now I can see that my hallway is three foot six, and the wall thickness is six inches.
Fill it, fill it. While I'm here, I can start dealing with this line right here. I go back, look at the handout.
I see that this line is on the right-hand side of the wall separating the family room from the living room. So offset by six inches, trim up to here. I'm going to copy.
I'm typing in CP, this line, arbitrary base point. Take it over to there, hit escape, trim crossing. I'm going to pick in through here, and I'm just doing a crossing to clean up the lines there.
And save the file. Looking at bulk storage, trim crossing, and I'm cleaning the intersections up. Again, it's very advisable that you clean the intersections up as you go.
Trim crossing, pick, pick, pick, control S to save. I now need to position this wall that's right here. I already know that it's five foot seven from this line to this line.
So I'm just going to take this line and offset by six foot four. This line and go down. That was the last item that I drew.
So I'm going to type M for move, L for last, enter, and pick it over here. Okay? So I'm going to erase this and do it again. So I had a five foot seven offset from the outside face to the upper face of this bathroom.
I'm going to have a six foot four from this wall down to the wall down there. So I'm going to offset by six foot four, enter. I'm going to pick and go down.
So I know that I have an entity down there that is my last item. So I'm going to say move. It says what? I'm going to type L, enter for last.
It's saying select objects. I hit the space bar to say I'm done selecting. I pick an arbitrary point with ortho on and move my hand over to the right.
So this is going to be the upper face of this closet wall. I'm going to offset by six inches. Pull it down.
Extend to here those lines. Trim, and I cut them. I'm now going to offset by two foot six, again by two foot six, and by two foot nine.
And then I'm going to offset by six and move these lines down. Fill it. I'm going to move these lines down.
Trim. Clean up that. Come back here.
Trim that guy out. I can start to see my geometry shaping up nicely here. I'm going to fill it.
I'm going to fill it. I need to deal with the closet that's in here. I'm going to offset by five foot eleven.
The lower face go up and offset down by six inches. I'm going to extend to here these lines. Now it's clean up time.
Trim crossing, and I'm just picking as I go, cleaning up the intersections that need to be cleaned up. I'm going to save the file. I'm going to offset by three inches for the jam behind the door by two foot six.
I'm going to move these lines straight down. Trim crossing. Pick, pick, and pick.
Save the file. I'm now going to put in the door at the interior bulk storage or walk-in closet, whatever you want to call it. Offset by two foot six.
Pick and pick. Trim. Save the file.
Back up. I see I need to put some doors in through here. I'm going to offset by three inches for my jam and by two foot four.
I'm going to move these lines up. Move these lines to the left. Trim crossing, and I pick on what I need to have go away.
Trim crossing. Do a crossing. Now I'm crossing farther than I need to, but since the cutting edges for these vertical lines were these two lines, I didn't need to worry that I had over-selected my geometry.
So I'm going to zoom extents, save the file, look at the handout. I have this bathroom. I don't have the closet in there, so offset by three and by two foot four, let's say, and I'm going to move these lines over.
Trim crossing. Save the file there. Trim here.
Clean up this area that was right there. Again, trim crossing. You know, you think you've got it done, but you need to spend a little bit of time reviewing your work and make sure that everything is done properly.
Okay, so this bedroom's done. This closet's done. The bathrooms here are done.
In this bedroom, I have the closet. I need to now start working on the bathroom. I'm going to offset by five foot seven.
Read the handout, see which side is being offset. Trim crossing. Clean up that intersection.
I now see that I need to start working on my bathroom doors. I'm seeing that I have a distance of two foot three and a half inches from this face and then six inches, I'm sorry, offset now two foot six for the door. You can see that I'm really cutting it close, but I'm just going to confirm that my dimensions are proper here.
I'm going to say what's my distance from the end of there to the end of there. I see that delta X is zero, so this is going to be great. Choose these lines, extend them down.
I can extend to here this line, and now I'm going to start doing some cleanup. I'm going to trim, do a crossing. I'm going to get this, this.
I trim here, and I'm going to trim here. I'm going to fillet these lines and save the file. Now, I need to put in my door for the bathroom, offset by three, by two foot four.
I'm going to move these lines over, trim crossing, select, and save the file. While I'm here, I now want to do my prep work for my pocket doors, which in fact are two foot six deep. If I say the distance from the end of here to the end of here, you can see that I have a two foot six door that needs to slide into a pocket that's there.
I'm going to offset by two foot six, and then I'm going to start developing my door. I'm going to draw a line from the mid of here over. Again, what I did, I'm going to erase it.
I typed L space bar for line. I typed in MID for mid. I chose this line, and I just pulled it over there.
I want to allocate an inch and a half space for the pocket door. So, half of an inch and a half is.75 or three quarters of an inch. So, I'm going to offset by.75 this line.
I'm now going to erase out my center line and do a trim crossing, and I'm getting rid of stuff I don't need so that I, in fact, have an inch and a half opening for my pocket door right here. Okay, let's say, for example, that instead of an inch and a half, we want to give it a little bit more room. We want to give it two inches.
So, what I can do is I can stretch. I typed in S space bar, C space bar for crossing. I chose a crossing here, picked an arbitrary point, orthos on.
Again, I want to expand the width overall by half an inch, so I'm going to stretch it up by a quarter of an inch. I hit the space bar to repeat the command. I pick, drag to the left, enter, arbitrary base point, ortho on, go down by a quarter of an inch, and save the file.
Now, since I've already gotten all of this work done here and I need to use it up here, I have a common base point I can use for copying, which would be this bottom right corner here, where I'm going to be wanting to copy this geometry from this intersection to this intersection. I really don't want to have to worry about having the duplicate lines here, because if I do a copy window, and if I include these little line segments here, I would end up having duplicate line segments here. So, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to say copy. I'm going to select these three lines, enter to say I'm done. My base point is at the end of there, and I'm copying them to the end up there.
I'm now going to trim. These are my cutting edges, and clean up that intersection, save the file, zoom extents. So, we have this bathroom laid out.
This one's laid out, the pocket doors, the closet, the bedroom, the door. We have the door at the bulk storage, interior bulk storage, door into the master bedroom, bathroom doors, closet door. I do not have my door into bulk storage, so I'm going to offset by two foot, three and a half, outside face by five feet, trim crossing, and clean this up.
Save the file here. I'm going to come back in a little while and deal with the door and window openings in the living room. Come back and deal with the fireplace a little bit later on.
We have the kitchen. We have the laundry, the furnace. I need to go on and put in my doors for my closet, so I'm going to offset by three and by 48.
I'm going to move these lines to the left, put ortho on, trim crossing. I need to pick on this stuff. I can do my front door offset by 36 inches or three feet, offset by six feet.
Entry doors are typically three feet wide each. I'm just going to move these lines straight up, trim crossing, and pick on my segments, and I pick that. Now, I just want to do my dimensions and see what the distance is here.
I can see that I have my three-inch jam, so I save the file, and that's pretty much it that I'd like to tackle right now. We have the rooms blocked out. We pretty much have all of our interior door openings ready.
What I'd like to work on next will be the window openings and the related exterior doors, so let's save the file. Go on and take a break for a few minutes, and come on back, and we'll have some more fun stuff to do.