Explore how to optimize a building layout plan using the alignment tool and other features to adjust walls, dimensions, and heights. Learn how to troubleshoot potential issues and ensure everything fits seamlessly in the construction plan.
Key Insights
- The align tool can be used to adjust the position of walls and ensure alignment of structural components. However, it requires careful handling as it can lead to misalignment if the mouse drifts off-axis. Holding down the shift key can help keep it on the horizontal axis.
- Dimensions in the plan can be adjusted to avoid pinching or overcrowding in certain areas. Dimensions that are not meant to be permanent should be deleted to avoid confusion and potential issues later in the project.
- Height adjustments are essential to avoid uncomfortable or unsafe spaces, especially in areas like staircases. Attention should be paid to attached elements such as curtain walls when making these adjustments to ensure they move accordingly.
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Now I've moved back to our new Level 1 plan, and what I want to do is look at a couple of things here and ensure everything is set up exactly the way we want it for our new layout. The first thing I notice is a bit of a weird condition at this location. So, I'm going to drag this wall back a bit, and what I want to do is make sure that these two studs will align when they're installed.
So, I'm going to use the Align tool, and what I can do is align from this face to that face. Then I can bring the two walls back together just by using the drag-extend tool here. That’s a nice tool to have to be able to drag walls along like that, but it’s something that you might run into some trouble with because it will take you off-axis. If you're having a hard time keeping your mouse straight, it’s not a big deal. You can just hold down the Shift key. As you can see, I have Shift held down right now, and I'm moving my mouse around like crazy, but it won’t leave that horizontal axis.
The next thing I’m seeing is that we’re just a little too far in here, and it’s pinching off this point. So, I’ll take a dimension and go to about this face here. It's 15 feet in. I don’t think we need it to be that much, so I’ll change that to 10 feet. Maybe it’s a little too short, so let’s go with 12 feet, and somewhere in between, maybe 11. Let’s look at that. There we go, that looks good. We just want it to kind of return there, and that should be fine. So, I’m going to go ahead and delete that dimension because it won’t be one we keep, and I’ll do that with all the other ones as well because these are the ones I was talking about that could cause trouble if we don’t pay attention to them.
We’ve got our two-foot-six-clear or outside dimension for this. This looks good here. I'm going to change my detail level from Coarse to Medium so I can see the construction of all these elements coming together, and it looks pretty good.
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Alright, so now, if we go to 3D view, we can see that the opening actually moved with the wall as we adjusted it, which was pretty cool. The other thing we want to adjust is this height here—it just looks too tight. If I were to go to my new Level 1 view and draw a section through here, which will be roughly in this location for our stairs, then I could take a look at it. Typically, I’ll draw a circle or something similar in here. If I go to Annotate and Detail Line, I can pick the circle as my option. If I draw it from this point until I hit the roof here, you can see we’re only at about seven feet, and that’s just a little too close for comfort for me. What if we had to add something, and there’s just nowhere to go? We can adjust our roof here, and I want you to pay attention to the curtain wall, which is set up to be attached to the bottom of that. If I change my base offset to negative six instead of negative seven, it’ll move the whole thing up a foot. That’s going to move the roof up, but the header here won’t change because that was part of an Edit Profile. If I go to my 3D view, then I can make that adjustment, but you can already tell that the extra foot will make a difference. So, let’s edit the profile. We’re going to go ahead and align it to the bottom of the roof here. This will take a couple of tabs to get the right line, but you can see it’s that line there. Then we’ll move it up, finish the sketch, and now we are in a better shape to have a stair actually kind of meet in this location and not be something that you can whack your head on. Now, if I were to make this eight feet, you can see we’re in a much more comfortable position instead of having it right on there. Let’s look at our 3D view now and make sure everything looks good. It does. So, I’m going to save again, and then we can go ahead and update our curtain wall.
