Learn about the architectural plan symbols and their significance in the design process. Understand how symbols for door labels, windows, keynotes, elevation, building sections, wall cuts, and more are used to illustrate comprehensive design details.
Key Insights
- Circles, hexagons, squares, and rectangles are standard shapes used to represent elements such as door labels and windows in architectural plans. The symbols are often linked to comprehensive lists detailing the specifications of the represented elements.
- Elevation, building sections, and wall cuts are represented by specific symbols in floor plans. These symbols guide viewers to the corresponding images and pages that showcase the complete design.
- Changes in the design are indicated by a review cloud and a delta number. This system facilitates the tracking of modifications, ensuring accurate record-keeping of the design's evolution.
Hello and welcome again. The following set of videos will be a general summary of some important topics that we are going to cover. When observing the drawings, you will see, for example, a Door Symbol label.
Now, the Door Label is often a circle with a letter inside it. So, this circle and the letter would refer to a list of doors, where we will find the description of the door included. For the windows, they are generally represented using the figure of a hexagon, next to the drawing of the window.
The hexagon has a number inside it and the number would then be related to the Window Schedule, where the specifications of the window will be detailed. You will see many keynotes in an architectural plan. These are typically indications where a number is in a picture.
There will be an arrow pointing to something and in the list of keynotes there would be a list of all the components that use this key label. We also have keys that identify rooms, with what we call Room ID that will normally have the name and number of the space. Keep in mind that we are using standard shapes for these elements, circles, hexagons, squares and rectangles.
These are typical for many projects, but depending on the Designer or the library used, these can have different shapes. It is possible that you see symbols of keynotes or windows such as circles, to be sure always check the Symbol Legends and Lists, just to confirm. We also have Elevation or Exterior Elevation, so what is going to happen is that in the floor plan it could have a symbol that looks like this.
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Or a symbol that looks like this. And what this says is that to see the Elevation of the building drawn here, you have to go to page A 2.1 in image 1. Another example would be if I had an elevation that is being built on this side, I would have the number 2 on the A 2.1, which means that if you want to see the elevation of the building that is here on the right and you can see the big arrow pointing to the right, you have to go to page A 2.1 in image 2. We will also have these symbols that indicate a Building Section. The symbols of a Building Section work together.
Construction Sections are typically cut through a building that shows everything, from the foundations to the roof structure. If I had these symbols in a floor plan, the two view markers would be connected by a line. This line could break so that it does not interfere with the information of the drawing inside the building.
And these symbols are saying that to see the section of the building that is cut here, go to page A 3.1 in image 1 and see that section of the building. Similar to the Construction Section is the Wall Section. This symbol looks very similar, but it is a small hat compared to the big hat in the Construction Section.
The section of the wall will only cut through a part of the building, usually the wall and some of the floors, ceilings and roofs connected. If we look at the symbol, this horizontal line would say that the section of the wall is cut through here, so it is looking through the wall that goes right here, so the cut is there, but it is cutting through the wall section right there. It is looking up.
You can see the arrow and you can see the small end of the leader line that would say that you go to page A 4.1, image 1 to see the section of the wall. Sometimes we will have details, which are closings of certain things. Where I have this thicker line, that says that the Detail Section is cut here.
But to see that drawing in particular, look at image 1 on page A 5.1 to see the detail that is cut here. Another option could be that it has a floor plan, and it could have an amplified area in the plan through here, which could be another name for detail. We have a dotted line that goes around the area that is going to be expanded in detail.
And we would say, to see this in a larger area, see image 2 on page A 5.1. In a floor plan, we will also often see Interior Elevation markers. These are typically found in rooms that have a lot of custom design input such as bathrooms and kitchens. This is the typical design where we have a circle that is inside a rotated square or a rhombus.
In the corners of the rhombus we will have letters or numbers, and in this case these represent the drawings 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D, which are on sheet A7.1. You can see here something similar where these drawing references 2,3, 4 and 5 are on sheet A7.1. If all are filled, then all the views are being referenced and there are also some plans where none of these are filled. There are Column Grid Lines that are typical for projects that have steel or concrete construction. The Structural Grid is usually defined by the Structural Engineer.
The grid allows us to reference elements of the building from a common reference point, in this case the vertical and horizontal lines of the Structural Grid. We can only see the Grid Line 1, which is a vertical line, and the Grid Line A, which is a horizontal line. However, there would be many more vertical and horizontal lines in our floor plans.
While we are developing a set of drawings, everything is changing constantly, so when we make a modification, what we normally do is put a Revision Cloud around it and place a Delta Number, which means change. The Revision Cloud is this type of bubble that surrounds the updated information. The delta is the triangle, and it will always include the Revision Number, in this case the number 1. This number will refer to the history of reviews, generally found in the Title Block, to keep a record of the date of the review and other notes.
So these are symbols that we will see in most floor plans, which begin to direct people to go to other pages to find more information. We will work with these much more as we advance in the course. I just wanted to introduce them to you.
In the next videos we will talk more about doors and windows.