Discover how to draft a horizontal wall in AutoCAD, using the midpoint snaps, inner face of lines, and the built-in quick calculator for efficiency. Learn how to offset lines and trim unwanted lines to create a clean, continuous object for a professional drafting look.
Key Insights
- When drafting a horizontal wall in AutoCAD, the midpoint snaps and the inner face of lines can be used to draw the center line of the wall. This prevents extra trimming and makes the drafting process more efficient.
- AutoCAD has a built-in quick calculator which can be used to find distances while in another command. This tool eliminates the need for challenging mathematical equations during the drafting process.
- Trimming unwanted lines and offsetting lines correctly enables the creation of a clean and continuous object. This is beneficial in creating a professional-looking floor plan in AutoCAD.
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The next wall we want to draw is the long horizontal wall running across the middle of the building. This wall is at the centerline of the building, which we can see because the left side of our PDF handout shows 'equal' on the dimensions pointing to the centerline.
Because of that, we know we can use the midpoint snaps here and here to draw the centerline of this wall. Let’s do that. I’ll type Line.
I’ll choose the midpoint here and the midpoint here. Press ENTER to finish.
You’ll notice that I chose the inner face of these two lines instead of the outer line. This is because, when I eventually trim and clean up these wall intersections, I don’t want to do extra trimming. If this line had crossed over to the outside, I would have to trim more geometry.
It’s okay if you drew it that way, but just know this will make your drafting more efficient in the future. Zoom Extents and CTRL + S to save. Now, if we check the handout, we can see that this wall is a total width of three and a half inches, which is our typical width.
However, we have currently drawn the centerline of the wall. We need to offset half of that distance above and below. Three and a half over two is not a challenging mathematical equation, but in some cases, you might face a more complex math problem to find the distance you need.
AutoCAD has a built-in calculator called the Quick Calculator to help with that.
You can access the Quick Calculator by right-clicking and selecting Quick Calc.
You can see mine is over here to the side, and you can move it by clicking and holding the dark rectangle here. I’ll place it over here.
You can see that we are in basic calculator mode, and the number pad options are currently showing.
At the bottom are more advanced calculator options, but we don’t need them for this example.
The best part about the Quick Calculator is that we can use it while in another command. Since we want to offset, we can go into the Offset command right away.
We can see that it suggests using three and a half inches, which we used for our outer rectangles. But in this case, I want to jump into the Quick Calculator to find our total distance.
We know that one-half is 0.5 in decimal form, but sometimes, with fractions like 3/16 or 3/32 of an inch, we don’t know what the decimal is for those fractional values.
Let’s start there: one divided by two, Enter, and there’s our fraction of an inch, 0.5. Plus three, which gives us our total inch number. Enter, divided by two, Enter, and we see that 1.75 is our final value.
The great part about the Quick Calculator is that, at the top, you can see a button called 'Paste value to command line.'
By clicking this button, it will paste whatever value is here into the command line for us.
I’ll click that button, Paste to Command Line, and we’ll see 1.75 appear in the command line.
Now, I can reactivate the command line by clicking and pressing Enter.
It has locked in 1.75 as our offset value.
Now we can click the line, go up, click the line, and go down. Press ENTER to finish.
We no longer need the Quick Calculator, so I’ll close the dialog box. But remember, it’s always one step away: right-click and select Quick Calc.
Let’s zoom in on these three lines. How do we make sure we offset one line to the top and one to the bottom? It’s as simple as selecting the outer line.
Remember that every line segment, including polyline segments, has a midpoint grip. When I select this line and this line, you’ll see the flat rectangle appear, which is the polyline grip, and that this line is connected to it.
That means I did, in fact, offset one line up and one line down.
If you accidentally offset two lines up or two lines down, please go back and try this workflow again.
I’ll press Escape twice to cancel and deselect those lines. Now I can select this midpoint line and delete it because it was construction geometry.
Some people prefer to clean up all their wall joins at the end of a workflow, but I like to clean them up as I go.
When I’m drawing walls in AutoCAD, they are cut with an imaginary line, and we like to fill them with poché.
Because of this, the wall cut is mainly symbolic, and we don’t want to show the difference between one wall connecting to another.
In a framing plan or other drawing types, this is a distinction, but for this example, we want to make the walls look like one continuous object.
We want to trim these lines.
I’ll go to Trim and select this line right here.
Now, the walls appear to be connected.
With the Trim command active, I’ll pan over by clicking and holding the middle mouse wheel, zoom in here, and trim this line as well.
Press ENTER to finish. Zoom Extents, CTRL + S to save.
In the next video, we’ll continue with the interior walls.
See you there!
