Explore the intricacies of architectural drawing interpretation, focusing on the details and consistent elements of a hotel building plan. Delve deeper into the specifics of structural grids, scales, building sections, and how to identify different phases of a construction project within the drawing.
Key Insights
- The article breaks down the details of an architectural drawing, highlighting features such as the key plan, sheet number, and scale for a hotel building.
- Elements such as the structural grids, building sections, and building elevations are identified, along with an explanation of symbols used in architectural documentation.
- Details like hallway dimensions, wall finishes, and the significance of column grids are explained, emphasizing the importance of these elements in construction project planning and execution.
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In this drawing, we have the name of the drawing here, the sheet number down here. If we look far on the left, here's the key plan. We can see that we're working in the same area as the last drawing that we studied.
We see that it's a Hotel Level 3, Part B. So this is Part A of the building. This is Part B. We see the sheet number, the scale, an eighth inch equals a foot, and that the nominal finished floor level is at elevation above mean standard sea level. You'll start to see a lot of consistencies from the other sheet.
If you look along the perimeter, you can see that we have the structural grids surrounding the building. We have indications, like right here, for a building elevation. We have a building section that starts here.
It's cut through the building here. I continue my hand straight across. This is the continuation of the building section.
So the building section is cut through the building at that point, looking towards the upper part of the drawing. I have some partial elevations here, which would be looking down this way, building elevation here, a wall section here. So again, the difference in the symbology is that the elevation has the big hat with no polylines.
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The building section has a slightly smaller symbol. There's the polyline coming across it. And if I just follow my line straight across, I can see that here's the end of that same building section.
Again, part A and part B, you can see a line that's right in this area. That line is the match line of the drawing. So I can see where the other part of the building is being cut.
I have an enlarged floor plan for housekeeping storage. It's on image four, on sheet A453. I have a partial section that's cut through here.
I have my dimensions for the hallway. We'll be talking about egress later on, but buildings have occupancy loads, and we always need to be aware of the potential for fire. And so based upon the occupant load, the occupant load drives hallway and corridor width.
We have a special kind of wall between these two units. We can see that we will have an enlarged stair plan. Again, a wall section right here.
With the dashes in there, that means that this construction project is still in the design and documentation phase. And so people have not yet established where that section will be located within the construction document sets. You're seeing room names, room numbers.
This would be wall finishes, an enlarged plan. And what's also going to happen is that there will be separate unit type drawings as enlarged plans, and we'll be covering those in some upcoming videos. So again, you can see it's relatively simple.
You need to pay attention to column grids and things are dimensioned off of columns. And so I can see that right here from this grid NB, it's one foot three inches to the face of the ethos, which is a coating that people put on the wall. Same thing here from this face up here to this grid that's down here.
It's nine inches to the face of the ethos from the structural grid. Let's go on to our next drawing.