Overview

• Drawing an exterior elevation from a floor plan

• Using grips to copy objects

• Setting up, naming, and saving a User Coordinate System and a new view

• Transferring height lines from one elevation to another

• Moving and rotating elevations

Now that you have created all the building components that will be in the floor plan, it's a good time to draw the exterior elevations. Elevations are horizontal views of the building, seen as if you were standing facing the building instead of looking down at it, as you do in the floor plan. An elevation view shows you how windows and doors fit into the walls and gives you an idea of how the building will look from the outside. In most architectural design projects, the drawings include at least four exterior elevations: front, back, and one from each side.

I'll go over how to create the front elevation first. Then, I'll discuss some of the considerations necessary to complete the other elevations, and you'll have an opportunity to draw these on your own. Finally, we'll look at how interior elevations are set up. They are similar to exterior elevations but are usually of individual walls on the inside of a building to show how objects, such as doors, windows, cabinets, shelves, and finishes, will be placed on the walls.

In mechanical drawing, the item being drawn is often a machine part or a gadget. The drafter uses orthographic projection to illustrate various views of the object and calls...