Creating Your Foundation

The first step in drawing your house is to provide an accurate foundation. In this exercise you will create a new drawing called lastname_house (use your lastname in place of lastname). ArchiCAD remembers the settings that you applied to your last drawing so to create a new drawing with the default settings press the Ctrl + Alt + N keys. Immediately save this drawing as lastname_house. To aid you in the construction of your foundation you will be setting up Snap and Grid. Go to the options menu and select Grids & Background. What are the Main Grid X and Y values set at by default?________ You will leave the grid set to this value but you will want to change the snap setting. How big is a normal sheet of plywood? What is the snap grid set to?___________ Change this value to 1. Click OK to close the Grids & Background window. Go to the Display menu and select Actual Size. The grid should now be visible. Go to options > display options and turn Wall and Beam Intersections to Yes so walls look continuous. Change text to Text with Handles so you can move and modify text placed on your drawing. Click OK to accept these changes. Double click on the Slab tool to bring up the properties window. Choose structural concrete as the material for the slab. Make the thickness of the slab 1 and then make the distance to story one 0. This will place the foundation in the ground so the walls of your house will be level with the ground. Change the model attributes so the top surface of the slab is wood flooring strips. I would suggest giving the bottom surface a gray color and the side surfaces a different color. This makes it very easy to figure out the orientation of the slab when viewed in 3d. Change the layer to foundation. Click on OK to accept these settings. Use your sketch to create the foundation for you house. Draw your slab being sure that snap is on and using the grid marks to help you get the size correct. Remember you can also use the relative coordinate system by typing in your x and y distances in the coordinate window. Once your foundation is complete view it in 3D. The last step is to fully dimension your slab. All sides of the house should have two types of dimensions where appropriate. The dimensions closest to the house show the details of the foundation if they exist. The outermost dimensions show the full dimension of that side of the house. Be sure that your detail dimensions are lined up (I would suggest you use snap and grid to align your dimensions). Your outermost dimensions should all be the same distance from the foundation. Create a title block of to the side of your foundation. What information should you always include in your title block? The last step is to print up your drawing using an appropriate scale. The scale that you choose depends on two things, the size of the drawing and the size of the paper. The most appropriate scale is the one that allows for the largest plot on the paper provided. Since your sketch was drawn on 11 X 8.5 paper using a 1/8 scale this should be the same scale you use when printing. Show your foundation to your instructor BEFORE printing!