Working on Doors and Windows: Creating a Square Window with Trim and Glass

In this video we will begin to work on our doors and windows. Let's start by going to the back view, and we'll begin to work on this window right here.

Okay, so if we take a look at the handout, we can see that this window is 2'8 from the finished floor level, that's the sill level, and it's going to be 4'0 tall. Now we already know from our floor plan that this is 4' wide, so this is a square window of 4' by 4'. Let's go to the home tab, let's change our current layer to A Medium, and let's get started.

We have two of our lines here already. Let's create two more lines by offsetting our finished floor line. I'll go Offset, 2'8, and hit ENTER.

I'll choose my finished floor line and go up and click, Enter to say I'm done, Enter to go back in, 4', Enter, this line, up and click, Enter to say I'm done. Now we want to create a rectangle in this space. Instead of drawing a new rectangle, I will simply fillet these using Fillet Multiple to make them all shorter.

Let's go Fillet, M, Enter for Multiple, and then I'll just go around this rectangle clicking as I go. Now you'll notice that these have all turned white. Why have they all turned white? Well, if we click on one of the lines, we can actually see that it's created a rectangle.

This has not happened before when we've been working. So why did it happen this time? Well, I'll undo very quickly and check these two lines. These two lines are actually polylines.

You'll remember at the beginning of this process, we offset a rectangle from our floor plan. That rectangle was still a rectangle when we trimmed it instead of exploding those rectangles first. So these two lines are polylines.

When you fillet polylines, they will join together, even if they're joining to regular lines. So I'll do my fillet one more time and watch this time as I go around. These two join right away and this vertical line has been transformed into a joined polyline.

I'll finish by going around here to here. Now this is a polyline and one more here to here and here to here. Now this is a closed rectangle on our A floor level line.

In order to move this to our A medium layer, I will match properties, picking this line and then this rectangle. Enter to say I'm done. This obviously stays a rectangle.

It just matches as many properties as it can. Okay. Now this rectangle is in the correct place and this is four feet by four feet.

Perfect. Let's take a look at our handout. We can see that there's some trim that actually goes to the outside and then there's some interior window geometry.

The trim is three and a half inches and the window geometry is one inch. So let's get started. I'll go offset 3.5. Enter.

This is my trim. It goes from here to the outside and click. Enter to say I'm done.

Enter to go back in. A distance of one inch. One.

Enter. Click. And this one goes to the inside and click.

Enter to say I'm done. Now this window is a sliding window. We can see that because of the arrow.

So in this case, I'll draw a line going from this midpoint to this midpoint. Enter to say that I'm done. Now I've split that window into two and I'll offset again a distance of one and I'll offset to the right and click.

Enter to say I'm done. Now we've created the space for our rectangle but we just need to clean up the inside. I'll zoom in and trim and I want to trim this left line and the top line.

Come up to the top. The left line and the bottom line. Zoom out a bit.

Control S to save. Now it looks like there's a window panel here that's a solid object and a window panel here that might be behind. And then clearly there's glass in the middle.

Okay. Now we want to add that arrow here that tells us the window slides. I'll go to my annotate tab and check our multi-liter settings.

I'll hit this button here. We can see we only have the VDCI mLiter. Remember this is set for paper space.

We want to make this for model space. So I'll go new. This is going to be called VDCI mLiter-48.

We're going to start with VDCI mLiter. I'll hit continue. I'm going to change my liter structure to be 48.

Also go over to content. Let's make sure that this is everything we need and it is emtext. This is what it looks like on the handout.

But when I go to liter format, we can see that the type is spline. On the handout, we can see that there are some sharp angles to our multi-liters. So let's change this spline to straight.

Now we can see a nice sharp angle from our starting point to our midpoint to our endpoint. Okay, excellent. Let's hit okay and close.

Now VDCI mLiter-48 is set and we can create a new multi-liter. This multi-liter is going to be started right around here. And I'll just come out as far as I need to with ortho one and click enter to say I'm done.

And then I don't want to type anything so I can hit close text editor. Now clearly I drew this too long and that's okay. I'll select my multi-liter and I'll move it in to right around here.

There we go. You may have to click on multiple grips to try to move it into the right position. Now our window is complete.

And again, this is a four feet zero inch window by four feet zero inch. I want to make this window a block. Remember in our earlier course, we built all of our blocks before we started modeling.

Here we built a block in one of our drawings. So how do we get this block out of our drawing and save it to a library? In this case, we are going to use the W block or right block command. I'll jump back to the home tab and instead of finding the W block command, I'll simply type W block, enter.

This is called right block. And what right block does is allows you to create a block from within a drawing. So in this case, our source will be objects.

We're going to select the objects and I'll select all of these with the selection window. Seven found, I'll hit ENTER. And I want to convert this to a block.

Also, I'll pick a base point so that I can place this again on other locations in my drawing. I'll pick a point and here I want to choose either the sill location or the head location, which is the top of the window. In this case, I'll choose the sill location for this window and I'll zoom in and make sure I get this middle rectangle because that's where the window opening would be.

Remember this rectangle on the outside is just trim. So I'll choose this point right here. And I'm also going to browse using this button and that will let me first go to my blocks folder.

I'll go new folder, new folder with a right click, or I can hit the new folder button right here. And this folder is going to be named elevation and I'll match case here, dash doors and windows. Okay.

Elevation doors and windows. Now I'll change the name of this block to be WDW, that stands for window, dash four feet zero, four feet zero. And that's 40,40.

Okay. I'll hit save. And remember we're doing convert to block and I can hit okay.

Now when I select this geometry, it is a block. And if I go I enter and then go to my current drawing tab. And here we can see window 40,40.

We can now use this multiple times and place it in our drawing in other locations. Before we do that, make sure you check your options. We're going to make sure repeat placement is checked on and uniform scale is set back to one.

Okay. Let's go to our view tab, switch over to our front view and we can add our window here and here. Before we do that, we need to know where the sill height is.

So let's go home, offset, a distance of two feet eight, enter. I'll click this line, go up and click, enter to say I'm done. And now with insertion point one and repeat placement, I can click my window from the current drawing tab and place it at this intersection here and this intersection here.

Escape, escape, escape. And now I can pick these four vertical lines and my sill line and hit delete. Zoom extents and control S to save.

We've now finished our four feet zero by four feet zero window. In the next video, we'll continue with the bathroom window. See you there.