House AutoCAD - Designing Walls and Doors HELP!!

Hi all,

I work for a company specializing in designing the inside of houses and for various architectural work.

I have previously used Photoshop CS5, but now I need to ensure that the dimensions of each of the plans are a lot more accurate so I have turned to AutoCAD 2010, with so much praise being attributed to it.

Firstly, I cannot express enough how disappointed I am with AutoCAD 2010. NOTHING is simple. Even trying to get walls with equal spacing is a NIGHTMARE.

I have been told that using the Multiline is the best option, for which I have now been trying, but when I want to get a door made by putting two lines down the side of one multiline and then trying to trim it, it completely f***s up, and deletes the multilines.

I have tried exploding and that hasn't helped at all.

Has anyone got any good ideas on how to fix this, or an easier way to make walls and doors?

Thanks,

NAILGUN

First, welcome to the CADTutor forum.

Second, I think you should have gone with a program specific to your needs like AutoCAD Architecture. It is based upon plain AutoCAD (which you currently have) but it has features designed with architects/architectural draftsmen/designers in mind.

I'm not a big fan of multi-lines. The handful of floor plans I've done were made using polylines. I would draw a perimeter then offset that perimeter to achieve my wall thickness. There are lisp routines that would make inserting doorways and windows probably easier but they don't come standard with plain AutoCAD.

You didn't really think you were just going to pick up Autocad and run with it, did you? You need training. You can find many books on Amazon.com. Just be sure to get one that's specific to your version of Autocad. Search for free online tutorials and/or purchase some DVD training material. You might even want to consider enrolling in a class. And of course, you can ask questions here in the forum.

If this is your full time work, I'd also suggest AutoCAD Architecture might be a better long term solution for automating certain tasks, but regular AutoCAD is also quite capable, you just need to learn the right techniques. Multilines for example are very old-school and nothing about them has been updated for a decade or so. I would submit that whoever suggested using them probably doesn't do architecture for a living.

Even with regular AutoCAD, you can use a lisp to insert doors and windows automatically, or you could use dynamic blocks, some samples of which you can find on the Architectural tab of the toolpalette

The handful of floor plans I've done were made using polylines. I would draw a perimeter then offset that perimeter to achieve my wall thickness.

I have literally just finished doing this, needed a quick drawing of my own house floor plan and doing it with polylines and offset was an abolute breeze, for any gaps is the walls i just used lines and trimmed them.

I have literally just finished doing this, needed a quick drawing of my own house floor plan and doing it with polylines and offset was an abolute breeze, for any gaps is the walls i just used lines and trimmed them.

This is what I'd suggest also.

Only use I have ever found for the multiline tool is to quickly represent stormwater pipe on old plans using the convention that was done back then.

There are some simple effective techniques in this vid:

KC

Firstly, I cannot express enough how disappointed I am with AutoCAD 2010. NOTHING is simple. Even trying to get walls with equal spacing is a NIGHTMARE.

Such harsh comments.....

If you're familiar with Photoshop and try and jump directly into AutoCAD then of course it's not going to make sense. Remain calm, take your time, let us help you. Once you get the basic grasp of how AutoCAD works then you'll realize it's actually quite simple. If you want to draw a line, type LINE. If you want a circle, type CIRCLE. If you want a line to represent a precise distance, simply type it using the proper distance input method.

Photoshop is a great tool to represent graphical objects. AutoCAD can do the same (albeit nothing on the level of Photoshop), but in my opinion the entire foundation of AutoCAD is to use the precise tools available to make a graphical representation of something using phenomenal accuracy, something Photoshop cannot even come close to touching, especially in the architectural or machinery world.

If you understand that AutoCAD is a precision tool first, and a graphical tool second, you will start to understand it much better.

welcome to the forum of genius...

What I can share is that, you should have the SOFTWARE CAD of what your company's scope of work...we have so many good softwares for all specializations...just consult our ADMIN here in forum so that they can help you what CAD softwares you need...

Have a nice day

And more, then there are lisp routines like 'dline' for your walls.

Many dynamic blocks for doors 'n windows.

Have fun using AutoCAD, you won't regret it.

Welcome to gthe forums!

As part of a private Autocad 3rd party develepor company we created a simple architectural package things like draw a floor plan of squares change it to walls, draw a wall via 1 line and four would follow doors & windows cut into the walls roofs elevations auto generated, the object is drawn in full 3d.

I have contacted the owner re this product sold for about $400 it went off the market will try again to see its availability.

What you see below is produced is an example but could be produced purely using Autocad commands all we did was take out the effort.

I think Nailgun lost interest as he has yet to respond to one post.