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!

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