Design Integration Laboratory

Architecture 222, 410/510, & 610

Project Two -- Cottage Plan Drawing Tutorial

Objectives

Experience the difference between painting and object-oriented drawing.

Provide an introduction to the basic drawing tools and methods used in PowerDraw.

Overview

This assignment provides a recipe for creating a specific drawing. Follow the directions given below to create a floor plan drawing of a simple cottage. (Over the next weeks you will get to know and love this charming little building!) When you're done, hand in the drawing in hard copy and electronically. It's due in one week, on Thursday, 24 October 1996.

Procedure

To begin with, there are some steps to follow for setting up PowerCADD and the document for drawing.

If you download and install the PowerCADD 3.0 Setup Files Package (Version 3), as you go through the first three steps of the tutorial, you will find that some of the settings have already been made.   (If you get a dialog box saying "Defaults file is being updated" when you start PowerCADD, it means something went wrong with installing these standard preferences. You should go ahead and use the steps below to set things manually.)

To be sure that the crucial settings for the tutorial have been established, and to set them maunally if necessary, go carefully through steps 1, 2, and 3.

1) First, double-click on the PowerDraw (or PowerCADD) icon to open PowerDraw with a new document.

Next, turn off the automatic snapping functions. Use the Layout menu Preferences... command to call up the Preferences dialog box. Then uncheck the top leftmost item, in the Snap box-- "Objects".

This turns off automatic object snapping, which makes it a lot easier to understand what is going on while you're getting used to the program.

Note: The preference setting "Snapping to Objects-- OFF" does not seem to be saved with the rest of the preferences, so you may need to reset it manually every time you start up PowerCADD 3.0.

2) Check the scale for your new drawing. Use the Layout menu Drawing Setup... command to open the Drawing Setup dialog box. The scale should be set to 1/8"=1'-0", using the top leftmost pop-up menu field. This is a standard architectural scale, which is the same as 1:96 if expressed as a ratio.

Also, the first part of this drawing will be easier if we make an adjustment to the snap grid. This has the effect of rounding off the dimensions of each item you draw, so you can quickly draw things to tidy even sizes. Use the Layout menu Drawing Setup... command again to open the Drawing Setup dialog box. Then set the "Grid Spacing" to 6".

Now the drawing is well set up, and we'll begin to draw.

3) Before actually drawing, make sure that the fill pattern is set to none. This is done from the Defaults palette. This palette controls the line and fill styles for drawing objects. These can also be controlled with the "Attr" menu, whose delightful name comes about because the line style and fill pattern for an object are considered "graphic attributes" of that object.

In PowerDraw, the default graphic attributes, used when new objects are created, are stored separately for each tool group in the main Tool Palette.

To set the fill for rectangles to "none", make sure there are no objects selected, then click on the Rectangle icon in the Tool Palette. Then, press the mouse button down with the cursor point on the Fill Pattern indicator of the Defaults Palette. Then slide the cursor over so it's over the top-leftmost pattern, shown as an N in a box. That's the transparent fill (or "no fill")--just release the mouse to select it.

4) Then use the rectangle and line tools to lay out the major lines of the cottage floor plan shown below. (Your drawing should be neater than this imported example.)

5) Use the special method shown in class for drawing the door opening, door swing, and door as one grouped object. To review, the steps are to first draw a white fill/white edged rectangle to mask the opening, then two short black lines for the sides of the opening, followed by an arc, black with no fill, for the door swing, and finally a rectangle for the door. To make a 2" wide door, you'll need to reset the snap grid to 2" or finer (and then you'll want to set it bck to 6" when you're done). After you've drawn the five pieces for the door-with-opening, select them all and use the Arrange menu Group command to make them one compound object (a "group").

Similarly, create your windows with white-filled main rectangles. Leter on, this will let them automatically mask-out the poche under them.

6) When you have completed the important lines of the drawing as lines only, go on to poche' the drawing. Poche' is the black or colored fill used to show that solid objects are cut through in an architectural drawing. It is a key part of the graphical language of architecture. The poche' part of the drawing can get in the way of revising the main linework, so we will put the poche' in a separate layer of the drawing, which we can turn on and off at will.

Use the Layout menu Layer... command to open the Layers floating window. If there is only one layer name in the list, then click on the New button to create a new layer. Two things will happen -- Layer 2 will appear in the list of layers, and it also appear in the "rename" box. If Layer 2 already exists, just click on it to put its name into the "rename" box.

Still working in the Layers... window, type "Poche" into the "rename" box to name the new layer. Then click in the list area just to the left of the Poche layer name, so the checkmark moves next to the Poche layer name. This makes Poche the "current layer", or "active layer", meaning it is the layer in which any new objects will be created.

7) Set the fill pattern to black using the Defaults palette.

Then use the rectangle tool to poche' your plan, rectangular area by rectangular area. This should go pretty quickly. Because of what we'll do in the next step, you can poche right over your door and windows.

8) Make Layer-1 the "active layer" again. Use the Layout menu Set Layer > command, and slide over to the layer you want active. Notice that you can only select objects in the currently active layer.

Then to see your drawing with the poche' underneath, use Layout menu Layers... to open the layers dialog, and then select Poche in the list, and drag it downward so the word Poche is below Layer 1 in the list. This puts the Poche layer underneath the other layer in your drawing, so the linework, door openings, etc, show over the poche'.

Things should look about right now. If not, ask for some help with the organization of layers in your drawing.

9) Finsh your drawing. Save the file, if you haven't already. Be sure to include a drawing title, graphic scale, north arrow and your name and date on the drawing. You do not need to draw the dimension lines--these are shown on the sample drawing for your convenience.

 

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To Hand In

Print a hardcopy to hand in, and use Netscape to hand in your drawing file electronically by uploading it to the homework folder on the DIL server. Use our file naming convention precisely: