Autocad 3D - Architectural Projects  

Creating Hole in Wall for Windows

T. Nicolas MARIE

In this tutorial, we are going to create a rectangle polyline 3600x200 in XY plane of Top view and we will extrude it 3000 along the Z-axis to give it height.  It is interesting to know that this is not the sole way of creating a wall in Autocad.  The student can also use BOX or PRESSPULL. Following the creation of our 3D wall, we will then make a hole of 1200x1200 in the wall representig te location of our window.

The extrude command works with closed polylines to create solid or surface.  The default result is a solid.  If we use lines, arcs or opened polylines, extrude results in surface.  Polar Tracking, Midpoint Snap (Enter OS and select MIDpoint) and Dynamic Input should be on.  The DWG file should be based on the ACADIso.dwt template as we are going to work in metric where 3600x200 are mm.

Create a rectangle 3600 by 200.

Change the view to SW to move from 2D to 3D.

 Use commad alias EXT for EXTRUDE. Select Object and Press Enter to End Selection, move mouse upward to show direction of Extrusion (here positve value of Z) and give height 3000.

The end result is a solid representing a 3600x3000 200-mm wide wall.

Now back to TOP view to create the curve profile for the window. Use REC or RECTANG to create rectangle 1200x200.  The dimension can be checked by clicking this rectangle and hover the crosshair over the grip for 1-2 seconds.

Now position window by insing MIDpoint Object Snap and Move command (alias: M). Move command require the selection of the 1200x200 rectangle, a basepoint and an insertion point.

Following positioning process, select the 1200x200 rectangle and press CTRL+1 or right click same object and choose Properties.  Change the elevation to 1000.

The end result will look like this:

It should be noted that all objects drawn on the top view are drawn to elevation 0 that is the value of Z is 0.  In this case, we have selected the 1200x200 rectangle and set if to a different value, move it up along Z by 1000.

Now use EXT for EXTRUDE to extrude the object 1200 upward.

Use SU for SUBSTRACT and first select the wall and press ENTER to end selection.  The first selection is the object that will remain after the substracting.  It is the object from which materials will be removed.

Then select materials to be removed and press ENTER to complete the sustracting process.

Note that SUBSTRACT, UNION and INTERSECT are also known as BOOLEAN operators. The End result using a different viewstyle (Say Conceptual):