How to Design a Floor Plan on AutoCAD 2016

Welcome, the purpose of this instruction set is to give an introductory tutorial on how to design a
basic floor housing plan on AutoCAD 2016. When completed, the user will have the knowledge
to both create the example presented and create their own design in the style presented.

Let’s get started! Here are the basic requirements you will need to use AutoCAD and start the
tutorial.
 A PC with an intel i5 processor or better
 Windows 10
 4 or more gigabytes of available storage
 An active AutoCAD 2016 license and download
 (optional if using a laptop) a mouse
Ok great, now that you have the required setup, we may begin.

1. Setting up a blank drawing

a. First thing is first, open up AutoCAD on your computer by clicking the AutoDesk icon on
your screen.

b. A grey screen with pop up, click the box that says get started like shown in the image
below.
 c. This should bring up a blank drawing. The Y and X axis should be visable in the bottom
left corner and the box in the top left of the drawing screen should say “Top” on it. If those two
items do not match the drawing below, close out of the program and repeat part “a” and “b” of
step one.
2. Setting the units
AutoCAD does not discriminate against units and therefore will be unitless unless told otherwise.
Therefore, we must manually set the units ourselves before drawing our floor plan.
a. Type un into the command line and press enter on your keyboard
 b. The drawing units box will pop up and show an array of options for the units. Change the
“type” to architecture, the “precision” to ¼” and the “units to scale inserted content” to inches.
When complete, your “drawing units” box should look identical to the one shown below.

3. Creating the walls

Ok so now that the units are set we are ready to start drawing our floor plan!
a. The first thing that we will draw is the exterior wall of the house.
i. Select the rectangle command from the toolbar and then click anywhere on the screen
and drag your mouse slightly up and to the right until a white outline of a rectangle is present
like the image below.
ii. We want to dimension the rectangle 51’,31’. In order to do that simply type @51’,31’ and
press enter. A rectangle will form in those dimensions like shown in the image below.
 b. Now that we have the outline of our exterior wall we can focus on the interior walls.
i. Type lin into the command line and press enter, this should bring up the line tool.
ii. Select the bottom right corner of our exterior wall and drag your mouse up so that your
mouse is tracing the right side of the rectangle from the bottom up. Use the visual below in order
to follow this process.
 iii. Type 15’ into the command line and press enter. From there drag your mouse straight
out to the left and type 10’ into the command line and press enter. From there drag your mouse
straight down until you intersect with the exterior wall line. Click on the exterior wall line and
then press the escape key on your keyboard. Congrats, you have drawn your first interior room, it
should look like the image below.

iv. Bring up the line tool once more by typing lin into the command line and pressing
enter. Select the top left corner of the interior room and drag your mouse to the left while
keeping on line. Type 6’ into the command line and press enter. Drag your mouse to the left once
again and type 10’ into the command line and press enter. Once you have done that, connect the
line perpendicularly with the left exterior wall line and press escape. Your drawing should look
like the image below.
 v. Bring up the line tool once more by typing lin into the command line and pressing
enter. This time select the 6’ point in the line that we just drew and connect it perpendicularly
with the top exterior wall line. Repeat that step for the 10’ mark. When completed it should look
like the image below.

vi. This completes the basic outline of the entire floor plan! We are now ready for the next
step.
 c. We now need to add the correct thickness to our walls.
i. We will add thickness to the exterior walls first. Type off into the command line and
press enter. This will bring up the offset tool which is very useful for adding thickness to walls.
Type 10 into the offset command and press enter. Select the right exterior wall line and drag your
mouse out the right and left click and then press escape. This will create a 10-inch shell around
your exterior wall which acts as the thickness of the wall. It should look like the image below.

ii. Now we must do the same thing for the interior walls. Type off into the command line
and press enter to bring up the offset tool. This time type 6 into the offset tool and press enter.
Offset all vertical interior walls to the right and all horizontal walls up. Once you are finished
offsetting the interior walls press escape to exit the offset command. Your walls should now look
like the image below.
 iii. Using the offset tool once more, offset the line shown in the image below up by 10’
and then offset it up again by 6”. Follow the images shown below for better understanding.
 d. Now that our walls have the correct thickness, it is time to clean up the geometry using the
trim tool.
i. Type tr into the command line and press enter and right click. This will activate the trim
tool. The trim tool will help us remove unwanted lines from our drawing by clicking on them.
We want to trim away all lines that intersect the thickness of our floor plan so that the walls
appear to be a single shape. Trim the lines in your drawing until it matches the images below.
After finishing the trimming process, press escape to exit the trim tool.
4. Creating multiple layers
In order to add dimensions, windows and doors we must first add multiple layers to our drawing.
This will allow us to visualize the floor plan in a way that separates additives into different
categories.
 a. Click on the “Layer Properties” from the toolbar. Use the image below in order to help you
find the properties button.

b. Select the new layer command shown in the image below.

c. Add new layer and name it “Doors”. Then select the color box and choose a different color
for that layer. An example can be shown in the image below.
5. Adding Doors
a. The first step in adding doors to our drawing is to switch our current layer to the doors
layer. This can be accomplished by clicking the layer button in the toolbar and simply selecting
the doors layer from the pop-up menu. Follow the images below to complete this step.
 b. To design the doors, click the rectangle command that we used earlier from the toolbar and
click then type 3,3’ and press enter. Then use the circle command and draw a circle with a radius
of 3’ by clicking and typing 3’ and pressing enter. Type lin and press enter to activate the line
command and draw a two lines through the circles center cutting it into fourths. Then use the
trim tool to trim 3/4th of the circle only keeping one quarter of the circle. Highlight and delete the
lines that were drawn. Type move into the command line and press enter. Click on the upper part
of the quarter circle and then click on the upper right corner of the rectangle you previously
drew. Your door is now complete. Please use the images below as a reference.
 c. We now need to make copies of this door so that we may have multiple doors that we can
place in each room. Type copy into the command line and press enter. Select the door that we
just created and right click. Then select the bottom corner of the door, at this point you can left
click and make as many copies as necessary. Move your mouse with the copied door and place a
door and the center point line of each room, do this for every room. One room needs to have a
rotated door so make a copy for that room off to the side. Press escape when finished. To rotate
the door for the vertical wall simply type rot into the command line and press enter. Select the
door and you will be able to rotate it 90 degrees and then left click. Type move into the control
line and press enter. Click the bottom left corner of the door and move it into the position so that
it automatically lines up with the centerline of the wall. Follow the pictures below for full detail.
 d. Trim away all excess lines that interfere with the doors. Your drawing should look like the
one below when finished.
This concludes the basic floor plan tutorial. You should now be able to draw wall lines with
varying amounts of thickness, create different layers within AutoCAD, and create doorways and
standard sized doors.