Table of Contents

Introduction

The Blank Drawing (Template)

Drafting a Rectangular (ninety degree) Lot with Bearing

Hit the icon that looks like a big letter P with another big letter L right through it. That's a common symbol for Property Line.) Or click on the fifth item on the survey menu. The one that says boundary. Whichever. Go to draw a line. That is, hit the letter V key on the keyboard. There is an icon for this, but you'll do this a lot and the keyboard is the way to do it. Move the cursor to about the middle of the screen. Set one point at the cursor by hitting the Insert key on the keyboard. Then hit the semicolon key(). That Point Polar, and you'll learn to love it. You put 100 in where it says distance. Then where it says Angle you enter CASE SENSITIVE N13d13m13sE then you check that 'from' is marked 'last point', not 'origin' and you push enter. Oh Wow, Right? We'll put a bearing and distance on that right away. (This is, after all, a ninety with a bearing, and how a lot is described by plat is how it needs to be shown. That 's a matter of state statute.) Find the toolbox that looks like this Now first move this toolbox to the side of the screen by dragging it over. It'll flip to vertical and look like this Use the forth icon from the question mark. Click on it. Move the cursor near the Southernmost end of the first line you made and right-click. Then right-click near the northernmost end of one of that same line. That's called Gravity Snap. You'll see a dialog box saying something and you'll see text on the screen. Move the cursor near the middle of the first line but on the left side of it, and click the mouse. Does it say what its supposed to?

Here's a hint

It should say N 13° 13' 13'' E. 100.00' If it doesn't, somebody messed up. We'll finish the lot in a bit, but just now we digress for a moment, and discuss the toolbar. It 's a collection of toolboxes. Look for the toolbox that looks a lot like this Move your cursor over the icons, and press and hold the button. You get a whole new toolbox. Cool, huh? For instance, if you press and hold the icon, you get this If you don't see the icon, look for one of the icons in this sequence Press and hold any one you find. Explore the other icons. Specifically, find this icon Its called Perpendicular from a line.
Now finish the lot. It's a 90 degree lot, 60' wide, so it'll be a snap. First we use (Perpendicular from a line and where says distance we enter 60. you can even push enter sometimes but Id be careful. (Gravity)(Right click) to one end of the line. Either one. Then wave the cursor a to the right, and click. Then push (Repeat Command) (F3) and do the same thing on the other end of the line. Be sure to get the new line on the same side as the last one. Now use (Parallel (=) and touch the very bottom-most end of the two lines you just drew. The new 'rubber band' line will be the final, fourth line. (Gravity) to either open endpoint of our '['.
That should do it. Save.
Next label the lines at the top and bottom. Find and click on and gravity snap on the very top corner of the box, and then on the top right corner. Move the text where you want it, and click. It helps to make the bearings run just like in the plat. You can say the opposite bearing is the same, which is ridiculous, but if you want to be right, match the plat. Otherwise you can get confused. Now refer to your cheat sheet. You've done the boundary from legal. Erase that. Do the bearings match each other? Do they match the plat? That should be your usual question. If they do, erase that line. Do the bold lines match the legal? That is, first, did you get the line type right? It should be solid and 0.7 feet wide.(To check on style, width, and gobs of other stuff, double-click on something. You get what's called an info box. Guess why its called that.) And it should match what your plat says, too. If it does, erase that line from the cheat sheet. See how the list is getting noticeably smaller? We're making progress. When you start getting past this tutor you'll simply switch to using that list. And for unusual items, you'll know to refer back here. It'll all work out. Erase the non radial line bit. Erase the aliquot parts bit. Erase down to the Centerline note. Then, select the boundary you just drew and move it towards the center of the drawing. Guess what's next? The centerline is. It's the second icon in the toolbox that looks like this . In the Survey menu, that's in the group with the boundary line in it. Right below boundary, which we just used. Click it. Nothing really happens. Its disappointing, I know. Fear not. Hit F2, for parallel by distance and enter 25. Then click the top line of the lot and then click anywhere above it. You get the centerline of a fifty foot wide right-of-way. Now it gets hairy, just for a moment. Before doing anything else, hit t for text. Enter the name of the road (for our tutor drawing, its called This Road You'll want to put it right on the centerline. We'll move it later, and explain later. What just happened was that the centerline line type changes the text size to 5, the correct size to label the streets. The previous command that set the line to boundary line style had also set the text size, but that wasn't the time to mention it.Now hit the minus key (-) on the keyboard. Click near one end of the new line and move the cursor in a circle. You'll see the line lengthen and shorten. Lengthen it, and click. Then do the other end. Now hit extension line Its the second icon from the left in this box. Find it yourself and click one it. The screen flutters a bit, and nothing, but the new line style has been set. So has the text size. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, find and click on . Its Perpendicular to a line and were back on the property lines extended to the centerline. Gravity snap to the top property corner, and cursor near the centerline. When a rubber band line appears, click. Do the same for the next top corner. Now we label their distance by using distance only That's the icon on the toolbox. You find it the same way you found the The extension line command already set the dimension size to be right. Anyway, click , and then gravity snap to both ends of the top line you just made.Put the dimensions on the outside of the whole thing, on the same side as the property line dimensions. Do the same thing to the other line you just made. Then hit t for text. The first item you see is Right of Way hit home to go to the front of the phrase, and enter the number 50. Set the text near the centerline on the property side of it. (We do this to label the right of way and the adjacent land, a state requirement) Now we do the block tie. This tie, like most, is to the nearest block corner. We don't show it at scale, so the distance doesn't matter just yet. I'm sure you remember the way you got the centerline style a while back, but were not going to do it that way this time. We e going to something totally different. The way we did it before, the text size was changed to a large size. This time, we want the text size to match the Extension line text size. (Dimensions are written and sized the same as text, and in text, to those cad geeks among you.) So anyway, if you've already hit the centerline icon, go back and hit the Ext Line icon now. And not to digress again but now we discuss another toolbox. The line toolbox. It looks a lot like If you cant see it, its probably not on your screen. To put it there, go back to this toolbar See the solid square on the end? Don't worry if its not black. The colors just whatever color you're drawing in. (So actually it really should be black). Anyway click the icon right next to it. That's the line toolbar icon. (The solid square is the color pallet toolbox icon, but that s another chapter. ) Anyway, have you found the line toolbox? Good. See the pointy finger? That's the same as icon. You'll use it a fair amount. Click it, and click on the centerline. Yes, were back on the block tie. Then hit the equal sign key. That's the parallel key. Click on the 100' line. A rubber band line appears by magic. (Its not actually rubber in this particular case, but go with it.) Click a couple of inches away, down the street. Click on the new line now, to select it. Move it to intersect the centerline down the road from our lot, to the east.
We have to do a break line in the centerline to show the block tie isn't to scale. This is one of the hardest things we do. The break line icon is in the Arrow toolbox, which looks like this The particular icon looks like (The finished break line will look the same.) Click on it. You get the selection cursor. Delete a section of line. That is, press and hold the mouse button make a selection window in about the middle of the block-tie center line, about an inch square. Then click You'll see a lightning bolt immediately appears. And its selected (already), and you're in move mode, with one end as a handle. Gravity click to one end of the gap in the line you just butchered. The bolt is anchored to it, but still pivots around madly. Gravity snap to the free end of the gap. Don't worry about the distance its at. The lightning bolt is anchored in place and position.
You get the cursor for Zoom Window. Zoom in tightly to just the gap between the bolt and the other end of the line.
Click the free end of the gap. You re in Extend Line mode. Click the curly Que end of the lightning bolt. The line is finished.
Hint I wont preach Save often! Save All the Time!! Its because I don't like you. Its not because almost all of these commands save the drawing before going into their routine. That way, when you do something by mistake, you'll still have undo to fall back on. And yet the drawing is saved from the inevitable computer crash, and the occasional power failure. Non the less, I personally get paranoid and save every couple of lines or so. Now we do those cute little arrows Click on the icon that looks like this Its on the Arrow toolbox, the one you just used for the break line. You remember that, don't you? Once you click on it, you move your cursor near the intersection of the two center lines down the street on the drawing, and you hit F4 on your keyboard. (That's Intersect 1). Next you gravity snap (that is, right-click) on the corner you want to measure to.Then you just click the cursor anywhere on which ever side of the line you want the arrow to be on. It appears magically. The arrow, I mean. Then you hit F3, for repeat command, and you do the same thing from the property line extended to the centerline on the northernmost side of the lot, in the centerline. Then gravity snap to the base of the first arrow and then click on the same side as the first arrow.
Now we do a couple of things quick and easy. See if you can find a toolbox that looks like this Then hit the icon. You'll get a toolbox that looks a lot like this . Then hit the icon. It stands for Record and Field You get a dialog box that lets you put in the plat and measured distances. In this case, the record is 85.00' (there's another 60' lot and then 25' more to the centerline of the intersecting street) and the field is 75.03' (if its flat its bull crap). Put the text right between the two arrows you just put in. Then go to the toolbox like the one on left. Hit the icon and gravity snap to the tail ends of those same two arrows. You had better get a bearing the same as the property line bearing. They're parallel. Put the bearing right under the record and field note. Then hit the icon. Its in the centerline toolbox. It gives you a text line that says Bearing Base Put it right below the bearing you just put on. Were almost done with the block tie. Hit the icon on the centerline toolbox and you get an impressive dialog box. Choose Found PK Nail and set one close to each arrow, and one at the third line to meet the centerline.The go for the icon. Draw a short dash out from the word Found and then gravity snap to the actual intersection point. Don't just click near the point. That just clutters up the drawing with extra points. Put arrows on each centerline nail. That's the block tie.
Rotate the Drawing Upright. See how were off to one side? We can fix that. And the north arrow is to close. And the drawing is tilted. All about to be fixed. First, select entire portion shown above. Press and hold the left mouse button and drag a selection box around it, just like in windows. Move it to the center of the paper. Keep it selected. Or select it again. Then hit the icon. Gravity snap to the bottom-most property corner. Gravity snap to the upper left corner. That's not a typo. Do one, and then the other. You'll notice the drawing is straight up and down now. The north arrow, however, is tilted. You keep it that way to be able to rotate the entire drawing back, should you ever want to. Go ahead and select said north arrow. Move it up to just under the location map box. Notice how the word north is now sort of upside down? Select just the word north. Either find and hit on the selection toolbox or hit on the keyboard. Rotate the word. And that's that.
Referring back to the cheat sheet, we check and erase what we've done so far.Delete down through Rotate the drawing upright. but the intersecting street intersecting street down the way is named That Street.Label it in the same size text you're using for the block tie. Then go back to the cheat sheet.Now we do Lot lines. Then adjacents, then easements, in that order. Its because you save keystrokes that way, once it starts to feel natural to you.
>Remember when we did property lines, and you used the icon? It was the first icon on the toolbox. Then we did center lines, and it was the second icon? ? You may not, since we didn't actually do that, but that's not the point. Point is, were now doing the third icon on that toolbox. Its called Lot Line and it looks like this. . Honest. And notice, its the third icon on the toolbox, And the next thing well be doing, is next on the list. Anyway, hit it. Nothing much really happens. Then hit or find perpendicular from a line or try Ctrl p. Doesn't really matter to me. Its already set at the right distance. Now here we do on odd thing. Obviously were just going stick these lines out from the corners. The command were using has trouble deciding which of the two lines to use when you set on a corner. It doesn't always make the same decision you would. So we just hit the middle of the line, click on the side we want the line on, and gravity snap to one end. Hit m for move, and move it. Then hit n for new, and put another line on another corner. You can gravity snap to the other end of the line to place it. You can do perpendicular from a line on the other property line to do the lot lines going the other way.
Now look for this icon Its the text block icon. Hit it. You get a dialog box already loaded with the words Lot Block. Guess what we put in this box. Guess Lot 1 Block 7? Well that was the correct guess. Put that in the space where the lot down the street towards the block0 corner is. Then put Lot 2 Block 7 in the lot were doing now, The Lot 3 on the other side. Then go kitty corner, behind the lot, and on the other kitty corner. Lots 4,5, and 6, respectively. See the illustration.
Now the Easements They're easy. Look for the icon, and hit it. Nothing really happens. Hit F2, and fill in the number five. Theresa a ten foot utility easement in the back and on the side. Click on the bottom line and a rubber band line appears. Click again, anywhere. The rubber band line is drawn five feet from the bottom line. Doesn't matter which line, because were doing both sides anyhow. Hit the various parts of the line five more times to fill in both easement lines. Hit T for text. Find Utility Easement and fill in the five and the foot symbol in the front. Hit enter once, and place the text in the bottom easement, and in the top portion.
Now a second easement, off on the side. Hit F2 again, and five feet again too, this time on the right side line. Both sides. Hit t for text again, and change the default text angle from 90 to 0. Then set your text in the easements, as shown. Now hit Shift e, or capital E, and trim the two overlapping easement lines by clicking near each end of the lines to be trimmed.
Then correct the lack of front property lines by gravity snapping to the end of one of the back lot lines extended and hitting n for new, and setting a line on each side the front corners. Do it twice.Look at the cheat sheet again.Erase Lot Lines, Adjacent Areas, and Easements. Zoom all the way out and take look at your drawing. Nifty, eh?
Next is Net Property lines. That's for land where title goes to the middle of the street in front and the middle of the canal behind. They re only allowed to build on just so much of that land, and that's called build able or net.Here they get what they get, period. Well save the tricky shit for later. Erase net property lines from your cheat sheet. Block Tie. Did that. Centerline control. Done.
Don't erase Pavement Width Type and Hatch Pavement Width Type and Hatch that's what were going to do right now. (Never get ahead of yourself erasing from the list, by the way). First you have to hit That's the drafting tools icon, and it does a few things. One you may have noticed is it pops up this huge toolbox. Another is it just set your current line style to solid, and quite thin. Another is that it sets your cursor move by the arrow keys to one foot for regular arrow keys, and one tenth foot movement for shift arrow keystroke. (No, the arrow keys are not the only keys that don't have a shift function. Can you guess what those keys are?) Anyway, hit the icon. Then hit F2, for Parallel by distance Set the dialog box to 10, and hit enter. Click on the centerline in front of the lot, and you get a rubber band line on one side or the other of the line. Its whichever side your cursor is on. Click on one side, hit F3 for repeat, and do the other side. Use _ (the underscore, or shift minus sign) to extend, or trim, the lines to within about an inch of the lot. If you have lettering near one line, like I do, instead of messing with the text, just end the line conveniently clear. Make the other side at the same end match.
Now you have to hit , for pavement, which should have popped up when you hit . Somehow find and hit pavement. Take that any way you want, you'll be disappointed. In the case of the icon, it just flutters the screen some, and comes to a rest. Mind you, its resting in the attack position. Checkout the cursor, its different. You're about to hatch something. Use gravity click to snap to each end of the two new lines, in more or less circular motion. You're outlining the pavement. (You may have noticed that icon is actually called outline). Hit enter. Wow, hatching.Okay, hit Control 1. The tail on the cursor disappears. Itd be cute if it were in a different position. That's the point select mode, and were going to make the end of the road hatch zig zag. Simply click on a place on either end of the hatch, in the middle of a lane. Give it just a second, and you get the outline of the hatch moving with your cursor. Just move it out, straight down the street, about a half inch. Same thing on the other side in the next lane, only go up the road, the other way. Make the other end of the road a mirror image.
Move the street name out of the hatch. It looks better in the thumbnail view. Hit t for text. Oh look, it already says Twenty foot of Pavement. That's because I know how lazy you are. I'm twice as lazy. I have poop loads of spelling help. Check out what else is on this text list alone, just by using the up and down arrows. Anyway, put the 20' comment in the hatch, right above the right of way thing. Zoom out all the way. Go over to your cheat sheet and erase road width and type. Oh look, the sidewalk is next. Its quicker and easier to run down a list of things to do than sit there and wonder to yourself A What am I supposed to do now? Saves you time. Frees you from decision making.
Anyway, about the sidewalk Click on . Then hit F2. That's parallel by distance. Plug the number five. Click on one of the two front lot lines, going right or left. Move your cursor up and click. Don't make a big deal out of it, You get a parallel line five feet above the first line. Let me know if I'm going to fast for you. Use _ (tats the underscore, or the shift minus sign) and click on either end of the new line closest your lot. See, it doesn't matter which end you started with. Aren't you glad you made a decision. See how much freedom I give you? Zap the new line over to the far end of the other line on the other side. Next we do something new. We hit , which stands for Concrete with Notes. You get the cross hair cursor and the hatch dialog box. This is good to know, I suppose, and useful later on when you're filling in patios, and sheds, and such, but for now just hit escape. Then hit # or shift 3. That's the hatch command. The other was the hatch fill command. That one, you just click anywhere inside a closed figure, and it gets filled hatch. You'll be surprised from time to time about your computers idea of a closed figure. Right now were using hatch to outline the sidewalk. Click on any of the four outside corners of the two lines you just messed with. Then click on the rest in a clockwise order. Hit enter. Oh wow, its beautiful. Okay, were almost done. Hit t for text. See how the very first line says Concrete Walk? Isn't that cool? Hit home, for home. Enter 5' and a space. Check that the text angle is ninety. Hit enter. Place the new text in the sidewalk. You may have to move the bearing and distance text to do it. Move it. That's pretty much the sidewalk. Zoom out all the way. That's Ctrl W, in case you didn't catch that. Zoom in on the cheat sheet and erase sidewalk. Oh boy, were moving now.
Actually, we just stopped. The next item is house related, and That's for a whole different chapter. So we erase that part. Fear not, in that same future chapter well learn how to resurrect the cheat sheet. Also anything else we've ever drawn can be inserted into any drawing. Its called inserting. Anyway, erase position house , erase everything down to the fence note. Well put in a fence. To start, hit . Believe it or not, this is a fence symbol. Hit = for parallel. Click on the right side property line. Move the cursor out just enough to see the new line clearly and click. (Unless the line looks weird or just not right. If That's the case, hit undo. Hit the icon. That symbol =s the ' same as symbol = icon. Click on the wire fence line in the legend. Then do the = sign thing again. Click on the property line on the right side and move the cursor out of the lot just enough to see it clearly and click. Then do the same to the top and bottom lines on the same side, outside the lot. Just in enough to see them clearly. Then do Shift E to trim the two sets of lines. Click on the top fence line near the property line, and then on the side fence line near the top. They get trimmed. Wow. Now do basically the same thing on the bottom. Exactly the same, in fact. Then hit t for text. It says and you should fill in 2' as in 0.2' and hit enter, then place the text near the side fence, on the outside of the lot. Hit for arrow, and notice its the right size arrow. Put it under the text, and pointing to fence.
Now go back to the cheat sheet. Erase down to corners labeled on drawing Then look around the screen and find that cute little corner circle one. It looks like this , Click on it, and gravity snap to a property corner. That's all there is to that. Do that three more times, once on each of the remaining property corners. (They're the ones with the really thick black lines.) Next, find and click the TXT icon on the property line toolbox. The screen flickers. You get a text dialog box and the word Found Place it near one corner, just a little bit high. Hit t for text, and scroll down to Iron Rod, and place it right under Found. Hit t for text again, and scroll to With Cap, (illegible) and put it under the first two. Select all three lines and hit n for new. You get a ghost image, and you place one at every corner. You may have to hit n for new a few times. You may even have to move the lot and block text, like I did.
Then you have to do a curved arrow that may be the trickiest part of this whole chapter. Its called curved arrow and it looks really neat.
Follow these steps
Hit Now back to your cheat sheet. Erase down to all abbreviations noted in legend. Now, my legend is a little bit different from some, I know.The commands that use abbreviations spit out little notes to go on the legend as they come up. My rule is, What doesn't show up on the drawing doesn't show up on the legend.So any way, zoom in on the legend. It looks like this 2) Erase the entire right-side column erase Water, Covered, and building, and the symbols for them then erase all the writing below wire fence. Then erase the line example that go with those words. Then erase the column defining vertical line. You should get this 3) From here, we use the minus sign, for line extend, and select and m for move, and ] for box, and we get something like this In the drawing, it looks like this Were progressing nicely, don't you think? Go back to the cheat sheet and erase down to Location Sketch. Guess what's next. The Location Map. Now, this can go a number of ways. Its perfectly legitimate to just draw the damn thing. That would look this ______________________________________ Another way is to go to a mapping website, get a map, and screen capture the thing with Alt-print screen. Then paste it into Windows Paint. Crop the part that would look good and copy it onto window clipboard. Save it (or export) as a JPEG. Bitmap will work too, but its very memory intensive. That would look like this This second method is not really hard, but it is time consuming to explain and to do the first few times. It will be in a future chapter. we're now going to do the titles, clean up the drawing, and be done. Next is Address. Gosh this one is hard. and notice that the blurb is in the upper right hand corner. That's where the titles go. What clicking the icon did, whether you noticed it or not, is, it made sure the titles toolbar was on the screen. Find it, and click on , you guessed it, address. Fill it out, (666 This Road, Some City, Some State, Hit enter and place it in the upper right hand corner. Next is Flood Zone This one is B 120192 0015 B 10-15-82.
In Florida where this tutor is being written, flood zone data is stated routinely, and when the property is in a flood zone the elevation certificate is done and charged for. Next is Description. Lot 2, Block 7, TUTOR ACRES,according to the plat thereof, as recorded in the public records of Some County, Some State.
Almost last is Certifications. Certify to the buyer, the lender, the title company, and the title underwriter, They are Your Beautiful Self Some wonderful Bank, Title Company of Wonderland, Title Insurance Company of Looking Glass Land.
All in the upper right corner of the drawing.
Then go back to your cheat sheet and see what remains that you care to do. They're mostly about record keeping, cleaning your computers memory, and getting paid. In actual employment, they are very important. Less so in a tutor. Go through it and think about it, but erase it.
Re-certifying a finished drawing. Or putting the final certification on a drawing just drafted. If you're certifying a drawing that has a different scale than the last one you messed with, you'll have scale problems. Its the size. That's a scale problem. Hit the icon. That's the Show Titles Box Notice it asks you the scale. Look around the drawing on the screen and plug in the scale. (Note the scale note says something like 1'=10'. Just plug in the number 10, not anything else. ) This icon also opens the Titles toolbox, in case you ever need to know that.
Be sure the Certified to dialog box is closed. This is to re-set the command. Then hit the icon and it should be alright. Enter the buyers name. Go down the list and use the lender, title company, and title underwriter you use, and erase the rest.
To add to or change the default list of lenders, companies, and underwriters, see Appendix C.
For my money this is a finished drawing of a ninety degree lot with a bearing.
Save it as Tutor 90 degree lot. Be proud.
End of Chapter One
How to draw a house Next were going to draw a house. Gosh, I hope we can breeze through this. First, of course, we have to bring back that cheat sheet. Its not as hard as it could be. First, save the drawing (again) as Tutor House. Click the icon. Find the blank drawing and load it. Select the list. Use the edit menu up top to copy the selection (not Ctrl C, which becomes unstable in this operation). Use the Windows menu up top to switch to your other drawing. Go to the one side of the drawing and use Ctrl V, or Paste from the edit menu, whichever, and paste the cheat sheet into your drawing.
The house is set back 25 feet from the front and 7.5 feet on each side. We set those setbacks in red construction lines which we snap to at the beginning, and we erase at the end. So first, Click on the red square icon. Its in the color toolbox, which looks a lot like this
.If you cant see it, look in the Toolbar. It looks a lot like this
The solid colored box at the end tells you the current drawing color. Did you know? Clicking it opens and closes the color tool box. Somehow, Id like you to change your drawing color to red. Just for now. Then click F2 (parallel by distance) and plug 25 into the dialog box. Then hit the top property line, and click anywhere below it. F2 again, and the distance is 7.5 this time. Click on either side line, and click anywhere inside the lot. Same thing on the other side. Now change your color back to black.
Okay, somewhere on your screen I'm hoping you have a toolbox that looks this
It s the toolbox this whole chapter is all about so if you don't have it you have to either shoot yourself or look for the house icon on this toolbar -
- and press it. You'll get the house toolbox. Looking at the house toolbox from left to right, we start with the house icon. It sets the line type, the cursor step sizes, an d some other stuff. Next is house hatch, which hatches the house with that neat little stubble everybody loves. Next is house dimensions, which set the dimension command to tenths, and sets the right size. Next is list dimensions, which includes a nice little arrow.
Next is the one were going to use now. Its house tie and it gives us the perpendicular ties for the house. Now we see if you got three out of three lines right. You may not have. I may not have told you everything you needed to know. We may back to that. Click on House tie. Use k to snap to the top red line. Move toward the top property until a rubber band line appears. Notice if its in the middle of the top line, or just touching one side or the other. You need it to be in the middle of the line. Then click there. You get a distance. Is it the right one? Do the next two. If they're right, erase them and proceed. If they're wrong, back up and try again. Concentrate on staying in the middle of the lines. Also changing the line width of the red line may help. Use the minus sign in the line toolbox to do that. Once right, erase the numbers (they're in the wrong spot.) And proceed.
Press the house icon twice. You'll see a change in the line type toolbox, if you've got it showing. It changes the line to a nice line for a house. Press v for line vector. Move near the upper left intersection of the three red lines, and press F4 for snap to intersection. Get your hand off the mouse. You be in Keyboard Territory now. One of the things pressing the house icon did, besides formatting the hard drive in the background, was to set the default cursor step sizes. Isn't that interesting? What that means is, hit any arrow once for one foot movement (exactly) and hit shift arrow for five hundredths movement. We round out the house dimensions to the nearest .05' and that works well. Other keystrokes you need to know are (.) the period, which is gravity snap set point, and (,) comma, which is gravity snap but not set point. Ok. Hit the period. That resets the line point from you got your hand off the mouse. Now use the cursor keys to move like the diagram says, and outline the house. You'll see the distance as you start the line & go the desired distance and use your arrow keys to move in the direction desired for the distance of your first wall then the click insert key. This will set your line then you go on to the next wall distance, and so on. At the very last point you hit the period key, to gravity snap and close the house.
After you have squared your house, your ready to hatch the house. To hatch, you simply click the hatch icon in your tool box , then click on the house outline (just the black line, stay away from the lines that have the red lines on them too) and pull inward and click. You'll see a new outline inside your house then click again between the lines and your hatch will appear. You must then delete second outline inside your house to get a nice hatch finish.
Next click on the dimension icon, this will set distance text. First click on the outside corner and move up to the next corner and click again. Your distance will then appear and you can move it into the House ( Its always good to place your dimensions inside your house. It gives a nice appearance and will give you room in drawing for other texts and other things.) In this second example, the dimension go in a circle and are up-side down. Use bottom to top motion and left to right motion instead. It snapped to the hatch, or a side of a line, instead of centerline. These dimensions are written by the machine as text, which means you just double-click on them and edit them. Just make it right.
The next step is your house type. Click on the one story residence icon in your tool box. A text box will pop up. Put the text into your house.
Look s like a nice house so far, doesn't it?
Now your ready to draw all your concrete. Hit the icon. It sets the cursor step sizes to 1 foot for arrow key, and 0.1 foot for shift cursor arrow key. It also sets the line width to 0.15' it also messes around in the background, and sends me all the porn on your computer. V
Draw a line with a bearing of N 55 Importing a drawing from AutoCAD
The usual way is to open Designcad, and open a blank drawing. Go down the cheat sheet and fill in all the title block stuff, and everything you can before doing the drawing part itself. Then go to File, import, and point to the AutoCAD file you want. AutoCAD uses Paper space , which I, for all practical purposes, do not, so you have to have a new Outside boundary for your drawing. I don't call it paper space because it works best if you get that notion out of your head. In Designcad you're always looking at the entire drawing, just like the client will when he gets it.
There is a command called Apply, on the AutoCAD toolbox, that assigns the current line and text styles to the selected entities. Set the current item, (like boundary, or centerline, or whatever), and select the corresponding parts of the drawing, and hit the icon. (A*)
Arrows imported into Designcad lose their arrow-ness and are imported as lines and hatch. Not much we can do there. Be prepared to remove and replace if its a problem.
Now if you think you're going to beat the whole paper space issue, here's something you should look at Open AutoCAD (if you don't have it you cant do this part). And open the file you want to switch over. Display it in Paper space. Export it to Windows Metafile. (Its in the files of type list). Do it. Then open that file in Designcad. Its not listed but it is acknowledged. You can do it. When you do, you get a picture of Paper space. That's all it is, is a picture, but hey, I told you paper space is not something used in Designcad. What you can do with it is, you can print it out and look at it in real life, to copy (or change) it.
Either way if you're importing the whole thing or any part of a drawing you're doing it for a reason and you have to finish the drawing.
Revisions (Changes) to Drawings
Some people start their introduction to this program here, revising someone else's drawing. If so, welcome, you'll be okay. Now start. Obviously the first thing you do is pull up the drawing you're going to revise. You open it just like any other file, with the icon. Then, the first thing you do is you save the drawing to its new name so you don't screw up the old drawing. In the File menu, click Save As . You are automatically in the correct directory. You should add the that best describes whatever it is you're doing to the drawing, and you may have your own additional naming requirements too. Now, I have a cheat sheet for you. Look under the Survey menu, towards the bottom, and find Revisions. Its in there, honest. Click on it.
Revisions - Form board Surveys Some people start their introduction to this program here, revising someone else's drawing. If so, welcome, you'll be okay. Now start. Obviously the first thing you do is pull up the drawing you're going to revise. You open it just like any other file, with the Then, the first thing you do is you save the drawing to its new name so you don't screw up the old drawing. In the File menu, click Save As. You are automatically in the correct directory. You should add the that best describes whatever it is you're doing to the drawing, and you may have your own additional naming requirements too. Now, I have a cheat sheet for you. Look under the Survey menu, towards the bottom, and find Form board Survey. Its in there, honest. Click on it.
Revisions - Final Surveys
Some people start their introduction to this program here, revising someone else's drawing. If so, welcome, you'll be okay. Now start. Obviously the first thing you do is pull up the drawing you're going to revise. You open it just like any other file, with the icon. Then, the first thing you do is you save the drawing to its new name so you don't screw up the old drawing. In the File menu, click Save As. You are automatically in the correct directory. You should add the that best describes whatever it is you're doing to the drawing, and you may have your own additional naming requirements too. Now, I have a cheat sheet for you. Look under the Survey menu, towards the bottom, and find Final Survey. Its in there, honest. Click on it.