Autocad Architecture Segment 2

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ATP239 Start Using AutoCAD® Architecture Now!

Segment 2

Date: March 16, 2009 Instructor: Beth Powell Level: Beginner Category: AutoCAD Architecture

Web: www.AUGI.com



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Use Grips to Your Advantage

ACA/ADT has more grips than the basic AutoCAD grips of Endpoint, Midpoint, Center, etc. Depending on the object, these grips can be used to change the swing of a door, make a wall go a different direction so a specific material is on the outside as opposed to the inside, move a door or window, and more. Generally speaking, the square grips are to move. The arrow grips are to lengthen. The arrow grips with the tail are to flip. When you hold your cursor over any of these, you will see tool tips to tell you what they do. Make a habit of using these grips for editing.

It’s AutoCAD Architecture and I made this!

Everything you’ve drawn so far looks great in 2D and will give you steps to get started really using AutoCAD Architecture. If you want to see what this looks like in 3D, turn on your Views Toolbar (right-click on the striped heading of any toolbar and choose Views) or use your View pulldown menu. You can see your design in 3D. Return to a Plan View now.



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Now that you’ve mastered basic walls, doors, and windows in ACA/ADT, it’s time to move into another new area, styles. We created walls, doors, and windows with the Standard style because we used the Design Palette. What if we want a wall that is a stud wall with gypsum on the inside and brick-faced on the outside? What if we want a casement window? What if we want a full glass double door? That’s where styles come into play. ACA/ADT comes with a wide library of styles. You use Style Manager to access these styles. A Style must be either in the current drawing or available on a Tool Palette to be available to use in your current drawing. If you are going to be using some styles that will become standards for you, then you’ll want to put these on a Tool Palette. Otherwise, copy styles you need for your current drawing from Out of The Box (OOTB) content or from custom content you have stored in a CAD Standards directory for your own styles.

Style Manager

The one key term you should take away from this class besides object is STYLE. Everything in AutoCAD Architecture is based on a Style. In AutoCAD, you had text styles and dimension styles. You’re just going to take that to another level in AutoCAD Architecture. Style Manager is both how styles are organized and how you load, share, and edit styles. Style Manager should be your new friend. Quite a bit of today’s class is focused on getting you comfortable with the Style Manager. Style Manager is found under the Format pulldown menu. Style Manager is divided into three basic categories. Under every category, you will see a general style name. If no style is loaded, standard is the default style shown.



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Architectural Objects

These are styles that you use to create your structure. Walls, doors, windows, roofs, curtain walls, etc.

Documentation Objects

Per the name, these are objects that are used for documentation.

Multi-Purpose Objects

These are basically anything that doesn’t fit in the first two categories.



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Content

When the product is installed, content is placed under Documents and Settings>All Users… by default. You can choose to place content at another location such as a server. Wherever this content is installed, a Content shortcut is made on the top left of the My Places portion where you open drawings. From Style Manager, Choose Open. You are opening within Style Manager.

From your Content, browse your way through to Imperial and choose Styles. This will show you the list of every OOTB style drawing that is available. Each of these is a .dwg file so you could actually open them outside of Style Manager to look at them. They contain many styles for the type of style that their file name implies. We’re going to choose Wall Styles-Stud. When we open Wall Styles Stud, we will then have two drawings open within Style Manager. One is our drawing that we are working on. The second is our Wall Styles Stud that we just opened.



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With both of these open, we can find the wall style we want to use and select to copy and paste it into our working drawing. Once the selected style is been copied into our current drawing, we can view what makes up the wall style. If you need to change it in any way, you may want to consider renaming it.



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When the style is now available, we can draw with that wall style or change an existing standard wall style to be the Stud wall style we have available.



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Using Other Styles

The walls we’ve already drawn with the Standard wall style from the Design Palette can be changed to the stud wall style. Select the walls you want to change with any AutoCAD selection method.

1. If you have your Properties Palette already Open, choose Style under the Basic area of the

palette.

2. If you do not have your Properties Palette open, right click after you’ve selected your walls and

choose Properties to get to the same point.

It is not always obvious where there are drop down arrows within the Properties Palette. If you left-click in the area where Style is listed as Standard, a drop down arrow will appear if there is another style. In this case, we only have one other style. We can now choose the Stud 3.5 Sheathing-0.5 Siding Style. You should then see that your selected walls now have some hatch and color to them. If you change your display configuration from Medium Detail to High Detail to Low Detail and to Presentation, you will see that while you haven’t made any other changes to your wall style at all, the walls will appear differently in each display configuration. This did not change the fact that the Layer Key still has the layer set correctly to A-Wall. If you want to draw a new wall rather than changing your Standard Walls, you can still begin your generic Wall command from the Design Tool Palette. Use the Properties Palette then to change the wall style from Standard, to your desired wall style.



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You can offset or copy walls or use any basic AutoCAD modify command on walls. Don’t be intimidated because they are not lines. Just don’t explode them. It’s suspected that this is the real cause of global warming!

Remember to post your questions and comments in the course forum and I’ll see you in the AUGI forums. Remember that this material is only a portion of the class, support is always available online in the private course forum. I encourage you to visit the course forum and ask any questions that you may have about this segment or simply join in the discussion. The ATP Mantra is: the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. Thanks again for attending this course!