Architectural
Drawings
Residential Construction
Unit 1
Mr. Todzia
Architectural Drawing
• An architectural drawing or is a technical
drawing of a building project that falls within
the definition of architecture.
– Technical Drawing- is a plan that visually
communicates how something functions or is to
be constructed.
– Architecture- The art and science of design and
the erecting of buildings and other physical
structures.
Arch. Drawings Continued
Architectural drawings are used by architects
and others for a number of purposes:
– to develop a design idea into a coherent proposal
– to communicate ideas and concepts
– to convince clients of the merits of a design
– to enable a building contractor to construct it
– as a record of the completed work
– to make a record of a building that already exists
Arch. Drawings Continued
• Architectural drawings are drawn according to
a set of conventions, which include particular
views (floor plan, elevations, section etc.),
sheet sizes, units of measurement and scales,
annotations and cross referencing.
• convention is a set of agreed, or generally
accepted standards, often taking the form of a
custom.
History of Arch Drawings
• Historically, drawings were made in ink on
paper or a similar material, and any copies
had to be laboriously made by hand.
• The twentieth century saw a shift to drawing
on tracing paper, so that mechanical copies
could be run off efficiently.
Evolution of Arch. Drawings
• The development of the computer had a
major impact on the methods used to design
and create technical drawings making manual
drafting almost obsolete, and opening up new
possibilities of form using organic shapes and
complex geometry.
• Today the vast majority of drawings are
created using CAD software
C.A.D.
• Computer-aided design (CAD), is the use of
computer technology for the process of design
and design-documentation.
Designing in CAD allows for two things to take
place easier than the older methods?
Making copies and changes
Standard Views used in
architectural drawing
• A floor plan is the most fundamental
architectural diagram, a view from above
showing the arrangement of spaces in a
building in the same way as a map, but
showing the arrangement at a particular level
of a building.
Elevation View
• An elevation is a view of a building seen from
one side, a flat representation of one façade.
• This is the most common view used to
describe the external appearance of a
building.
• Each elevation is labeled in relation to the
compass direction it faces, e.g. the north
elevation of a building is the side that most
closely faces north
Cross Section View
• A cross section represents a vertical plane cut
through the object, in the same way as a floor
plan is a horizontal section viewed from the top.
• In the section view, everything cut by the section
plane is shown as a bold line, often with a solid
fill to show objects that are cut through, and
anything seen beyond generally shown in a
thinner line.
• Sections are used to describe the relationship
between different levels of a building.
Site Plan
• A site plan is a specific type of plan, showing
the whole context of a building or group of
buildings.
• A site plan shows property boundaries and
means of access to the site, and nearby
structures if they are relevant to the design.
Scaled Drawings
• Architectural drawings are drawn to scale, so
that relative sizes are correctly represented.
• The scale is chosen both to ensure the whole
building will fit on the chosen sheet size, and
to show the required amount of detail.
• For example a drawing could be done in ¼
inch scale. This means that if you measured ¼
inch on the drawing, it would represent 1 ft in
real life.
Architectural Symbols
• All drawings use a common set of symbols,
similar to a language. See Architectural
Symbols hand out.
Annotations
• Working drawings include dimensions.
• They specify:
– room size
– wall lengths
– door and window locations
Detail Views
• Detail drawings show a small part of the
construction at a larger scale, to show how the
component parts fit together.
• They are also used to show small surface
details, for example decorative elements.
• See handout of house plans
Schedules
• Window, door or trim schedule is a detailed
list of:
– window types
– Window sizes
– installation details
– finishing instructions (painted, stained, vynal,
prefinished)
• See house plans for examples