1.1 - Design House 99 - Step 1

1.1.3 - Draw the Exterior Walls

After you have drawn the House Outline (abcdefgha) of the Floor Plan, the drawing of the Exterior walls will be the second step. The wall is consisted of two lines, each one defines one side of the wall.

As you can see in the (hover on) Floor Plan, the thickness of the exterior wall is 0.300 m, and the thickness of the interior wall is 0.15 m.
You will use the House Outline (hover on) - polyline(abcdefgha), you just have drawn in the previus step (Fig.1.1.3.1), as the outside of the exterior walls, and you will offset it, inside this polyline, in a distance of 0.30 m to create the second line of the wall.

OFFSET polyline (abcdefgha) to the inside, to create the exterior walls as shown in Fig. 1.1.3.1.

• To do this:
  On Ribbon, click Home tab ►Modify panel ►click Offset icon (hover on) , or type Offset and press ENTER. (Fig 1.5.5)
• on the Command prompt: Offset Specify offset distance or: type 0.300  and press ENTER, where 0.300 m is the offset distance.
• on the Command prompt: Offset Select object for offset : select polyline (abcdefgha)  and press ENTER.
• on the Command prompt: Offset Specify point on side to : select any point inside the polyline (abcdefgha)  and press ENTER.

The result is shown in Fig.2.5.3.1 (without dimensions).

Fig.1.1.3.1 - Offset Polyline

Now you have to do some work on the layers. Create a new layer, with the Name: A-Exterior Wall, Color: Magenda. To do this:

Click Home tab ►Layers panel ►click Layer Properties icon ►right-click ►New Layer ►for the Name type A-Exterior-Wall , for Color select mangenta and press ENTER. (Fig 1.5.5).

Fig.1.1.3.2 - Create New Layers</span

After that the the Layer Properties of your drawing, will be as shown in Fig.2.5.3.2.

Select the inside polyline (1) with with layer name 'A-House-Outline', and rename it to 'A-Exterior-Wall', it's color will change to magenda. Turn-off the layer 'A-House-Outline', the polyline (2) will disappear, then offset the polyline (1) to the outside direction at a distance 0.30. The result is shown in Fig.1.1.3.3, you have two polylines with color magenda and layer name 'A-Exterior-Wall.

Fig.1.1.3.3 - Create the Exterior Walls</span

Save this drawing file under the name house99_exterWalls, in the folder step1 you have created. The full path of the folder is: ../myProject/house99/step1/house99_exterWalls.dwg.