new ADT user trying to draw a house plan

[alh7349]

I am trying to draw a sample houseplan to learn ADT. I use autocad 2004 for work but also have ADT 2006. I purchased a house plan kit that helps a little but I am still having some trouble getting started. I am assuming it is built on a slab foundation at ground level. Now that being the case, in using project navigator I created a foundation level, main level, and roof level. In trying to follow the tutorial I changed around my level heights etc. My thoughts are that the foundation will be at the ground level and 2' high, then the slab with a 1' thickness directly on that, then the exterior walls on the main floor slab. Does that sound about right? When I open each drawing (foundation for example), the bottom of the foundation doesnt appear to begin at 0,0,0. How can I fix this, offset it?

 

TIA

[John Martin]

Personally I would use the project navigator to set my heights as follows (just a typical layout that you need to change to be specific for your facility):

 

Foundation -2 elev with floor to floor of 2'

1st floor 0" elev with floor to floor of 10'-12' depending on design

roof plan 12' elev floor to floor irrelevant in the case of a single story structure

 

Using project navigator allows you to draw at 0 elevation for all your drawings and create a view that references all the drawings into a single drawing at the proper elevation based on the settings in project navigator. I alos like the face of the foundation wall to be at 0,0 and not the corner of the footing as most batter boards are for the foundation wall and not the footing from a surveying perspective. Make sure you use baseline justification properly during all your drawing stuff.

 

Also remember that the house slab will typically not sit on top of the foundation wall but rather to the inside of it with expansion joints around the outside so slab will most likely be at 0" elevation with -4" or -6" or so thickness.

 

Hope that helps. Rememer that your view is setting the base height. See the attached image. It is a 2 story home with roof so I had 3 different levels all drawn at 0" elevation using project navigator to control height placement.

 

John

[alh7349]

Ok, thanks for the input. From the houses I have seen, the sidewall of the foundation can be seen from 8-12" above grade, so would the proper way to configure it be to have a foundation set to -2' with a floor to floor height of 3' and then a 1' thick floor slab at 0" but inside the foundation perimeter?

[John Martin]

Sounds like you are getting a a handle on it now. The reason I mention baseline justification is that in ADT it is a good idea to create wall styles using baseline justification. For foundations that means the outside face of the foundation wall. For an exterior wall other than foundation baseline will be whatever component lines up with the outside face of the foundation wall, typically the face of studs if there is no brick or stone veneer. There are so many ways to do things so this is just the way I like to do it. When I do floor slabs I never do just one. I do separate slabs for each are of the structure that will have a different floor finish (i.e. tile, carpet, etc.) This allows me to bring the structure into Viz and add separate materials based on slab. However, if I am doing construction drawings I do not even use slabs since I have no need to.

 

John

[alh7349]

Alright, here is a frustrating issue I am having. I have this drawing called "3D composite" where I xref all of my constructs in to see how they line up to eachother. As I messed with things it appeared I had some overlap. So I tried to start from the beginning. I look at my "foundation.dwg" and it is associated with the level foundation as described in my post above. If I pull the exterior walls.dwg file in, they line up on top of the foundation, but when I pull both drawings into my "3D composite" drawing, they both start at 0,0,0. I have been racking my brain here for about an hour trying to get this fixed. Any ideas?

[John Martin]

When you say xref, are you using autocad's xref command, or are you creating a view in project manager? There is a big difference between the two. Because everything is drawn at 0 elevation using the xref command will do that. In the project manager there is a views tab down the side, left or right depending on which side it is docked to. Click this tab and then right click on view and creat a new view. You will get the option of which levels to pull in as part of the view. Select all the levels and if you have them set up properly in the project manager all will line up properly. If you are still having problems PM me the file and I will take a look at it.

 

John

[alh7349]

Wow..that did it perfectly. I guess I can disregard the whole "3d composite.dwg" file.

 

I had created this 3dcompsite drawing, following the tutorial video, as a separate construct. What is odd is when I first did everything, they stacked nicely in my 3d composite drawing. After having some issues, I redid it and now everything comes in at 0. I had the drawing open and from the project navigator I drag those drawings in. They show up in xref manager but I am not actually xreferencing them as done in regular autocad.

[John Martin]

Glad to hear it worked OK. I was winging it from memory since I have not used ADT in some time and don't have it at work. Wish I did LOL once you get a grip on this whole project manager thing you will be amazed at what it can do for you, especially once you get into things like curtain walls and such that span multiple levels, and things such as stair wells that are consistent throughout a facility. I have not used any ADT past ADT 2004 so there are a lot of new features that I haven't used yet. Sometime in the next FY I am going to be migrating to Revit at work so my whole workflow will change once again, but definitely for the good.

 

John