Making your house a home with AutoCAD

Designing a house might be a long and delicate project, since you need to capture and express each detail of how you dream of your home, in order to bring to life that perfect space where you will live.

That’s why there exists some specific software that could help you to design digitally all the floor plans you need to build the most impeccable home. And, one of the fundamental programs you can use is AutoCAD. This software is a type of computer-aided design that was created to make drawings, and 2D and 3D modeling. It allows you to form different structures and objects, thanks to infinite commands and tools. And, here we will explain to you the steps of the process to make your house a home with AutoCAD.

However, if you are a homeowner or an interior designer that wishes to expand your knowledge about this interesting theme, you can join our AutoCAD for Interior Designers Course. We will teach you the principles, and all the tricks you will use to work as a professional.
Steps for creating your floor plan with AutoCAD
AutoCAD is an incredible software that provides you all the tools that will improve your drawings for creating a brilliant project. Let’s see what you can do with AutoCAD.

Make the sketch of your house
Before starting the process of digital drawing your floor plan, you must make a sketch, or a simple freehand drawing, to reflect all the measures needed to create the house. So, first, you need to have a meter a take your time to draw all the rooms of your house, and write the dimensions in large and width, the position of windows and doors, and any other fixed element that will be in your house, like a ladder.

The dimensions of interior spaces are important, and, alongside the thickness of the façade and walls, will give the real size and measures of your house. In addition, you need to indicate the direction of opening of doors and windows because all of this needs to be expressed in your floor plan.
Once you have completed the sketch with all the right measures, then it is time to start with AutoCAD.

Draw the walls
When you imagine and draw a house you have many elements that you need to add to your floor plan, but when you use AutoCAD the order of your drawing is so important. That’s why you must create different layers for each object, and each one goes with particular characteristics.

So, first, you go to the menu “Layers” and you make a click on the Layer properties manager, where you will create your first layer, and, in this case, will be “Walls”. Here, you will use “lines” to identify your walls, and you will put the measures you calculate in the previous step. Now, you will make a click on the menu “Modify” and then click on “Offset”. This tool will allow you to make a parallel duplicate of the lines of your walls with a determined distance. In this way, you will have the thickness of the façade.

The following step is to build the partitions or those interior walls that only separate spaces and do not withstand the weight of the ceiling. For this, you need to use the same tools “Lines” and “Offset”, to place all the walls you draw in your sketch. And, if you need to make some changes to these lines, you can use the commands “Cut” and “Extend” of the same menu “Modify”. You do this to make sure that vertices fit well between perpendicular walls.
Place doors and windows
Once you have all the walls of your house, it is time to draw the doors and windows. For these drawings, you will use “Lines” and “Cut” tools, and the measures you got on your sketch. Now, you must draw different lines to delimit the space of each hole where you are going to put the doors. Then, with the command “Cut”, you will select the lines you just draw and you will cut the walls. That’s how you have the holes where will be positioned your doors.

At this point, you need to add the carpentries. To do this, you create two layers: doors and windows. On each layer, you will use lines to draw the carpentry for your doors. In this case, when you design a digital floor plan, you use squares and rectangles to represent frames and door leaves. And, finally, you add an “arc” to draw the sweep of your door when you open it.

Now that you have one door ready, you can create one “block” where you will put all the doors you will repeat on the floor plan. This “block” in AutoCAD is a folder where you group different objects, and you assign it a name and an insertion point. In this case, you will go to the Home Tab and make a click on the menu “Block”, and then “Create”. Here, you write the name and select the base point and the objects. You can define the “base point” by selecting a vertex of the door with the cursor. So, when you insert the block “Door”, you will have the object on the screen, that you will put on one of the holes that you previously made. And, if you need to change the orientation and sweep, you can use the tools “rotate” and “symmetry”. When you finish with the doors, you will follow the same steps to create your windows.
Furniture
You already have your walls, doors, and windows. Now, it is time to add all the furnishings that will bring to life your home. So, you can draw different squares, rectangles, or circles to create chairs, tables, beds, cabinets, etc., in each room.
Or, if you want, you can access the AutoCAD Design Center, which is a library where you will find several elements to insert into your digital floor plan. This center is placed on the menu “Tools” – “Pallets”, and you will see all the available elements to create the furniture of your house. You select each block and place it whenever you want.
To finish your drawing, you should add the name of each room, and the dimensions that indicate the size of each space.
    
As you could see, the process of creating a house is an incredible adventure, and you can keep learning how to use all the tools that provide the software AutoCAD if you register on the HDI’s AutoCAD for Interior Designers Course. Here, you will discover the world of digital drawings and how to design astounding homes.