House floorplans / General Home design in AC2009

[J S Machine]

I am a new user to Autocad 2009. I have spent the majority of the past few days learning the basics and playing around with it. I was hoping to find a tutorial on drawing a basic house or another type of structure.

I have a couple of questions.

Are most floor plans drawn in 2D?

Are layers used in floorplans like they are in other aspects of drawings?

I want to do some work with a floorplan and see what can be done with it. Anybody know where I can find a good small tutorial on drawing a basic house or a place where I can find a basic floorplan to download?

[ReMark]

Welcome to the CADTutor forum JSM.

Take a ride down to your local bookstore and buy a copy of AutoCAD 2009 / AutoCAD LT 2009 No Experience Required. The book was written by someone with an architectural background and takes one through all the steps needed to create a set of plans for a small cabin.

My personal opinion would be that yes, currently, most floor plans are drawn in 2D but that doesn't mean they couldn't be done in 3D.

Layers should ALWAYS be used in any type of drawing as it leads to better organization and less clutter.

[BIGAL]

A flat 2D house plan can be made into 3D simply by setting "thickness" to wall heights doors and windows require UCS to draw on outside of walls. To check viewpoint 1,1,1

Another trick is to draw all elevations align them to correct location then use rotate3D to make into 3D ie stand them up ! viewpoint 1,1,1 etc to check

[Organic]

Welcome to the CADTutor forum JSM.

Take a ride down to your local bookstore and buy a copy of AutoCAD 2009 / AutoCAD LT 2009 No Experience Required. The book was written by someone with an architectural background and takes one through all the steps needed to create a set of plans for a small cabin.

I learnt AutoCad via this book at the start of the year (prior to that I had no experience in CAD what-so-ever). From memory it took me jsut over a week to complete.

I don't do architectural drafting, althoguh it is a good book for teaching the basics.

[Organic]

A flat 2D house plan can be made into 3D simply by setting "thickness" to wall heights doors and windows require UCS to draw on outside of walls. To check viewpoint 1,1,1

Another trick is to draw all elevations align them to correct location then use rotate3D to make into 3D ie stand them up ! viewpoint 1,1,1 etc to check

Option 1 is the way I do it if I need something 3D. Draw it 2D to start with and then make it vertical/3D from there.

That second option is not something I would recommend.

[ReMark]

Here are a couple of other options for creating a 3D building layout.

POLYSOLID
"You can create walls with straight and curved segments of constant height and width."

EXTRUDE
"Creates a 3D solid or surface by extruding a 2D object."

I can't say I agree with method 2 above although I could see it used as a "down and dirty" means of making what appears to be a 3D representation but the objects would have no depth. Kind of reminds me of paper dolls.

Likewise I am not a big fan of Thickness either.

THICKNESS
"Thickness is a property of certain objects that gives them a 3D appearance."

Bottom line: Try all four suggestions and see which one you like best in terms of appearance and ease of use.

[Tankman]

I learned AutoCad via this book at the start of the year (prior to that I had no experience in CAD what-so-ever). From memory it took me just over a week to complete.

Now that is amazing! Are you a Mensa or something?

[Organic]

Now that is amazing! Are you a Mensa or something?

Ah, no lol.

A company hired me as a draftsperson without any experience in AutoCad (or anything) as I am young and hence cheap as compared to someone older or qualified, or even having experience lol.

At the start I didn't know a whole lot, althoguh the above book certainly got me started out and then I've built on that since etc...

Edit: typo

[stevsmith]

Another trick is to draw all elevations align them to correct location then use rotate3D to make into 3D ie stand them up ! viewpoint 1,1,1 etc to check

Thats not a trick. Its just bad draughting practice.

This method is NOT recommended.