[Manish Jain]

Customization of AutoCAD for architectural application
Dissertation by Ar. Manish Jain , Dept. of Architecture , Malviya Regional Engg. College (Now MNIT) Jaipur , Year 1997 


New commands are added in Autocad to make it more compatible with the users which are more interested in the designing & drafting of buildings especially of a residential. These command saves times of an user by reducing the steps involved in certain repetitive tasks such as construction of an wall, placement of an door & window etc.

1.1 wall

We could able to draw an wall with wall command
1. We can access it at command prompt by typing it
2. We pick following icon  from the construct toolbar

3.   By selecting it in construct popup menu



After selecting the wall from menu we get an dialog box for construction of wall . The dialog  contains the value of thickness and height of wall  automatically from the file Custom.svf thus reducing the inputting work in drawing wall . The wall drawn by the software custom.CAD are automatically trimmed at corner therefore reduces the boring work of  trimming & filleting.
In dialog box we have three option for creating an wall from point we specify viz.
1. center     draw wall from points we specify taking them in center
2. up     draw wall from points we specify taking them up points of wall
3. down     draw wall from points we specify taking them in down points of wall



The value input in any one of  input box it will automatically converted into the current format of system  here for example if we enter the value of thickness 4.5 it will automatically converted into 4’-1/2” . After giving the value of thickness and height of wall  we have choice between
1. close the end of wall This will close the wall and form an closed room
2. close last corner This will close the end of wall to form open ended wall.

The advantage of  custom.CAD wall  is that we get an both type of wall representation in 2Dwall and 3Dwall.
• Wall in 2D are constructed in layer “wall2d”
• Wall in 3D are constructed in layer “wall3d”


Most useful  concept custom.CAD  wall  is the concept of database association list hand_dat , this list save the name handle given to each entity drawn with wall at the time of construction. Hand_dat is an association list contain handle of all the wall created from start  of  drawing, handle is the name given to an entity which constituted a wall  for example “wl1” is handle given to first wall constructed with Custom.CAD wall command.



Wall command help the end user to construct a wall  without going in long process of drawing an line then offsetting it , then drawing an next line and offsetting it ,after that filleting it, then drawing an 3dface over the and so on .

1.2   Door

We could able to draw an door with door command
1. We can access it at command prompt by typing it
2. We pick following icon  from the construct toolbar
3.   By selecting it in construct popup menu



As we select the door from menu we following prompt
pick point on wall :  (we will select an point on wall where we want to put an door)
after selection of point on wall we have door constructor  dialog box on screen  by which we could input the value of door width and height of an door.


after giving the value of door width and height we select the “select the door direction” button to give the orientation to door. As we press this button we see an dialog box this dialog is depend on the orientation of the wall we have selected  it consist of four image buttons representing four possible orientation of an door. We can see four different dialog box one by one
1. North  & south wall :  this type of dialog come when we select an north wall.



2. East & West wall : This type of dialog box appear when we select the east wall.



 After selecting the orientation of door , the door is constructed in the wall we have selected. The custom.cad  door automatically cut the wall both in 2D and 3D. therefore we doesn’t  have to worry about trimming of an wall which will become headache in conventional method of putting door by insetting a block , other advantage of the door command is that we get door in 2d and 3d are in different layer.

• door in 2D are constructed in layer “door 2d”
• door in 3D are constructed in layer “door 3d”
• wall region in 3d are constructed in layer “wall3dr”
We get following result on screen after pressing ok of  door dialog box.
1.If we turn off the layer wall3d , wall3dr and door3d :


2. If we turn off layer wall2d and door2d :


The door constructed with door command have door handle “dr” similar to that of wall. Handle is the name given to each entities which constituted a door for example “dr” is handle given to first door constructed with Custom.CAD door command. All handle are kept in association list hand_dat.

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