from 2d drawing to 3d model - textual creations pro v21 architectural presentation... · turbocad...

Donald B. Cheke www.textualcreations.ca

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TurboCAD Pro V21 - Architectural Presentation

From 2D Drawing to 3D Model

Donald B. Cheke

www.textualcreations.ca


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Copyright © 2014 Donald B. Cheke TurboCAD is a registered trademark of IMSI/Design

Published by: Donald B. Cheke Saskatoon, SK Canada Visit: www.textualcreations.ca

All rights reserved No part of this document may be reproduced, copied, stored on a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author. The purchaser may, however, print one copy of the document to paper and may make one backup copy of the downloaded material for personal safe keeping. Limitation of Liability While every effort has been taken in the preparation and the writing of this document the author assumes no responsibility for errors and/or omissions nor for the uses of the material and the decisions based on such use. No warranties are made, express or implied with regard to either the contents of the document, its merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose. The author should not be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the contents of this document. Special Note All of the work presented within this tutorial is based on TurboCAD Pro V21. Although users of previous versions are welcome to try the tutorial it cannot be stated what results will be achieved. Many changes, some subtle and others not so subtle, are made with each program revision. Although many steps and directions would be generic some may not be. The same can be said for tools between versions. Older versions may not have the same tools as Pro V21 and if the same tools are available the tools themselves may have been revised and hence, work in a different manner than they previously did.




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Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Files ................................................................................................................................................................................ 6 Drawing Engine Selection ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Setup ............................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Marion Plan Insertion ................................................................................................................................................ 33 Wall Detail .................................................................................................................................................................. 37 Preparing for 3D ........................................................................................................................................................ 52 Exterior Walls.............................................................................................................................................................. 57 Interior Walls .............................................................................................................................................................. 83 Floor and Ceiling ..................................................................................................................................................... 105 Door Openings ......................................................................................................................................................... 116 Window Openings ................................................................................................................................................... 130 Door Construction ................................................................................................................................................... 136 Door Insertion with Door Tool ............................................................................................................................... 176 Window Insertion with Window Tool .................................................................................................................... 207 Roof ........................................................................................................................................................................... 236 Materials Application – Session 1 ....................................................................................................................... 287 Named View ............................................................................................................................................................. 301 Render Scene Environment .................................................................................................................................. 305 Render Scene Luminance ..................................................................................................................................... 308 Exterior Enhancements .......................................................................................................................................... 314 Saving the First Rendered Image ......................................................................................................................... 349 Interior Presentation - Named View ..................................................................................................................... 351 Render Scene Environment and Luminance – Interior View ........................................................................... 353 Materials Application – Session 2 ....................................................................................................................... 361 Furnishings – Session 1 ......................................................................................................................................... 365 Adding People – An Alternative Method ............................................................................................................. 383 Saving the Second Rendered Image ................................................................................................................... 389 Garage Stairs and Railings .................................................................................................................................... 391 Sky View Presentation ........................................................................................................................................... 405 Furnishings – Session 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 410 Preparing for Sky View ........................................................................................................................................... 442 Named View – Session 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 444 Saving the Third Rendered Image ........................................................................................................................ 448 Paper Space Setup ................................................................................................................................................. 449 Paper 1 ..................................................................................................................................................................... 452 Printing ..................................................................................................................................................................... 457 Additional Note ....................................................................................................................................................... 459



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Introduction Without a doubt, one of the larger fields where CAD software is employed regularly is within the architectural industry and its myriad faces. As such, any means to make the process of architectural presentation quicker and easier is most certainly welcome. With such thinking driving the development of TurboCAD, this awesome program continues to evolve and provide users a formidable way to achieve pleasing and functional plans and renderings in a very timely and professional manner. TurboCAD Pro V21 - Architectural Presentation is a fully illustrated tutorial that leads the beginner through every keystroke necessary to transform IMSI/Design's 2D Marion floor plan into the fully detailed 3D model presented on the cover of this tutorial. The furnishings are not created during the tutorial, but they are supplied and inserted into the house during the tutorial. This tutorial was originally written for TurboCAD version 11 and then revised for version 15 and again for version 17. Due to its popularity it has now been fully revised for version 21, integrating new program processes and some new design ideas. Also within the tutorial, the reader will learn how to set up their drawing, how to insert standard lighting and how utilize render scene luminance. The reader will learn how to establish a render scene environment and the reader will learn how to render their drawing and save it in a high resolution image format. Three different views will be established and one paper space page will be created. This tutorial is in no way intended to teach house design or construction but rather it is intended to teach the use of some of the tools that TurboCAD has to offer and to introduce the new user to a drawing methodology. The author feels confident that the techniques outlined within the tutorial can help lay the foundation for future successful TurboCAD drawing and illustration for even the newest user. As with any technically advanced software, the user is generally faced with a steep learning curve. It is the hope of the author that the money and time spent working through a Textual Creations tutorial will help ease the learning and allow the reader to come away feeling confident that they made a wise decision. This tutorial will assume that the reader has the Platinum edition of TurboCAD Pro V21 with its extra architectural and mechanical tools. Although no mechanical specific tools will be used during the tutorial many architectural features will be. Although the basic edition of TurboCAD does come with some architectural tools there are others available within the platinum edition that will be used within the tutorial. There are many ways to approach a project and it is likely that each person using the program would proceed in very different ways, so be open to alternative methods as experience builds. What is important is that the user becomes familiar with the objects that they wish to model and begin to look at them in a different way than they might otherwise do. What primitive shapes make up the whole? What will be required of these primitive shapes early in the drawing and how will this affect needs further along? What component or components should be started with? Many questions can only be answered through experience, but hopefully some of them will be answered by the time the beginner has worked through this tutorial. There is a great deal covered in this tutorial and the author urges the beginner to be patient, to read very carefully and to take the time necessary to do a good job. Try to enjoy the process as much as you will enjoy the final results. This tutorial assumes that the beginner has studied the desktop to some degree and can locate most of the tools. Since there are endless desktop configurations that can be set up in TurboCAD the author has opted to illustrate the required tools with the TurboCAD Classic user interface with its Office 2003 theme and the default toolbars in their undocked format.



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Please remember that any supplied images and files are for use within the tutorial only and may not be shared or sold to others. The supplied furnishings may be used in future personal or commercial rendered projects.



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Marion Plan Insertion Switch to World Plan view.

From the File menu at the top of the TurboCAD desktop select Open. Locate the Marion floorplan.tcw file. This is a file that has long been included as one of the program samples. It has also been included as part of the tutorial download. Select the file name and click Open. Its default location is: C:\Users\USER NAME\My Documents\TurboCAD Professional 21x64\Drawings\Samples\Architectural\

Press Ctrl + A to select the entire drawing. Select Copy at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.

Close the Marion floor plan drawing.

With the Architectural Presentation Tutorial file on screen select Paste at the top of the TurboCAD desktop. Do not deselect.

With everything still selected, Tab into the Inspector Bar and enter 0 in the X and Y Position fields. Press Enter to move the plan into place.



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With everything still selected, select Place on Workplane from the Modify menu at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.

Since this is a frequent need, many users create a shortcut tool on their TurboCAD desktop or use the short-cut keys. Below is an image of the tool the author has on his desktop. Text toolbar is created first and the icon changed to the down arrow icon via the 'change button image' customize functions.

Select Zoom Extents at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.

Press Esc to deselect the selection. Open the Design Director palette and left mouse click the Refresh button at the top of the Design Director palette to deselect any layer names that may be selected.

Why? – In essence every item is created on its own workplane (something that is written into the program), even though it looks like they are on the same workplane. Issues don't arise until the 2D objects are copied and then issues will be seen when functions such as line length, offset, parallel, tangent and so forth are employed. It is just something a user has to get used to as it has been this way for all versions of TurboCAD.



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Wall Detail To get a feel for how the 3D model will be constructed a 2D wall detail will be now be constructed – working towards the image below.

Select Zoom Extents. Grab the lower scroll bar and move it to the left until the house plan is almost out of sight. Select the Rectangle tool from the Line toolbar.

Place the cursor over a grid intersection and G SEKE snap to place the first point of the rectangle (non-critical location). Move the cursor in a right upwardly direction for a short distance and then Tab into the Inspector Bar and enter 7.5 in the Size A field and 24 in the Size B field. Press Enter.

At the next grid intersection to the right, G SEKE snap to place the first point of the next rectangle. Move the cursor in a right downwardly direction for a short distance and then Tab into the Inspector Bar and enter 24 in the Size A field and 6 in the Size B field. Press Enter.



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Exterior Walls TurboCAD has a function that will allow a polyline to be turned into a wall. As this is the case, a polyline will now be snapped around the perimeter of the floor plan. If the plan was only an inserted image the user would have to left mouse click to place the perimeter line since there would be nothing to snap too. If that were the case, a user could also use the Ortho Mode and Extended Ortho snap functions to help with placement. Select the Polyline tool from the Line toolbar. Select Coral from the color dropdown menu on the Property toolbar.

V SEKE snap the first point of the polyline to the outside corner of the garage, as indicated in the picture below.

Move the cursor to the outside corner of the house, by the breakfast area, and V SEKE snap to define the next point of the polyline.



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Select Zoom Extents for an overall view so far.



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Door Openings There are now a couple of ways to approach doors and windows and both will be addressed in the next sections. One method has the user create door and window openings with user defined blocks. Once the openings are established the user then creates their own doors and windows and places them in the openings. A second method has the user employ the TurboCAD Door and Window tools. The basic Pro version of TurboCAD has a couple examples and the Platinum version has several more to choose from. These tools can seem pretty overwhelming and it may seem like so much effort is needed to utilize them. Although this is true, to a degree, once the user has created a number of styles they can be made to be available for all future drawings by inserting the new doors into a user created template file (deleting the doors and openings while the styles and blocks remain for use as needs arise). As such, – it is really only the initial set up that is time consuming. Down the road, time will be saved and doors and windows will not need to be created from scratch each time. Some door openings will be created first. It has been the experience of the author that the block opening profiles perform best if they are created on the world plane and in Isometric SE view. The openings are based on 2D entities that the user creates and places on the Blocks palette. These blocks are used in conjunction with the Wall Opening tool. A user can then later place a user created door or window within the opening. The door sizes in the case of the Marion floor plan are easily determined. Basically, select the door swing icon and check the size on the Inspector Bar. Below, the front door swing icon is selected and the size reads 3' 0". It will be assumed that the doors are at the standard height of 6' 8". The user also has the luxury, in this case, of turning on the Schedules layer and noting the door sizes listed there. Do so, turn on the Schedules layer. In some cases the plan and the schedule differ, such as the linen, broom and master bedroom doors. The sizes on the plan will generally be the ones used in the tutorial, but some will be changed.



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No need to changes views at this point. The openings and doors required will be created as follows. Some were changed by the author to better suit more current building plans/codes (see red sizes).

Turn off the Schedules layer. Select the Floor Plan text, the Marion text and Areas detail text box out in the open and assign them to the Schedules layer to clear them from the view. Select Plane by World from the Workplane toolbar. Turn on the grid. Select the Rectangle tool from the Line toolbar.

The front, back and door to kitchen will use TurboCAD openings and user created doors. All other doors will be created with the Door tool.



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In a clear area of the drawing, to the right of the house, G SEKE snap the first point of the rectangle. Move the cursor to the right a short distance and then Tab into the Inspector Bar and enter 3' in the Size A field and 6' 8 in the Size B field. Press Enter.

Press the Space Bar to exit the tool. Select the Make Copy tool to turn it on. Select the rectangle that was just created. Place the cursor over the line that leads to the X rotation handle and when the four directional arrow cursor appears left mouse click to pick up the selection.

Move the cursor over to the right of the original and left mouse click to place the copy. In progress below.

Select the Make Copy tool to turn it off. The first rectangle placed is at the desired size. (3' 0") With the second rectangle still selected, Tab into the Inspector Bar and enter 2' 6 in the Size X field. Press Enter.

Select both rectangles.



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Window Insertion with Window Tool Windows will now be installed using the Window tool. This tool works exactly like the door tool, by establishing styles. The window tool, like the door tool, does not apply casings or brick moldings. After the windows are inserted, time will be taken to create casings and brick molding on the front windows. Switch to World Plan view. Turn off the Doors layer and the Foundation 3D layer Turn on the Windows layer. Because Muntins will be used, three styles will be required. A bow window in the breakfast area will not be used in this tutorial. Two 32 x 60 inch windows will be used in that location instead. Open the Style Manager palette. Expand Window Styles and select Standard style. Select the Create New Style button.

Enter Marion 3-3 in the New Style Name field and click OK.

This is now the active style for modification. Adjust the Dimension settings to reflect those in the image below.



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Minimize Dimension and expand Design. Select Single Hung from the Window type dropdown menu. Rectangular is the desired shape. No profile is required. Profile can be used to create non-standard shaped windows. Before muntins are added the window tool will be selected and set to size, so that a proper preview will be available.

Back in the drawing select the Window tool from the Architecture toolbar.

Right mouse click on the Window tool icon to open the Properties dialogue. Under the General tab select Marion 3-3 from the Window Styles dropdown menu.

Under the Window Main tab adjust the settings to reflect those in the image below. Adjust the Sill Height field so it reads 2' 11 3/4". Click OK. This will put the top of the window opening at the same height as the top of the doors.



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Press the Space Bar to exit the tool. Select and delete the two cut offs. Switch to Isometric SW view. Select the new roof section and assign it to the Roof 3D layer. Press Esc to deselect the selection. Turn on the layers, as indicated in the picture below.

Switch to Isometric SE view. Select the Quality Rendering tool from the Render toolbar.

Before continuing with additional modeling, a view, an environment and luminance lighting will be addressed. This will give the reader a preview of what the outside rendered scene will look like when the modeling is finished. An inside render will eventually be made but that is going to be made with a file saved under a new name since the lighting, render scene environment and other things will be changed to better suit that type of presentation.



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Named View Select the Draft Rendering tool from the Render toolbar. Before a view can be named the drawing must be maneuvered into a desirable view. This is done with the Walk Through tools but before this is done the camera perspective must be engaged. Right mouse click on a render icon to open the Camera Properties. Under the Camera tab check Perspective View and slide the View Angle to 51.566.

Click OK to exit the dialogue. Switch to Front view. Select the Examine tool on the Walkthrough toolbar.

Select Look To Drawing Center from the View / Camera menu at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.

Left mouse click in the drawing and hold the mouse button down. Move the cursor to the left to turn the model clockwise to a position similar to that in the image below.



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Allow the screen to rerender. If it does not, select the Draft Rendering icon and the select the Quality Rendering tool again.

Select the kitchen door. Open the Materials palette. Locate the Marion House Paint v21 Category and then double click on the Off-White 1 thumbnail to apply the material.



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Allow the screen to rerender. Press Esc to deselect the selection. The door is washed out and materials will be changed further along when the other furnishings have been placed and their materials are made available.

Select the Wireframe icon from the Render toolbar two times, once to end the render and once to turn off perspective. Switch to Isometric SE view.



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Press Esc to deselect the selection. Right mouse click on one of the Standard view icons to open the View palette. Select Activate next to Interior ISO.

Close the View palette. Select the Walk tool from the Walkthrough toolbar. Left mouse click in the drawing and hold the mouse button down. Move the cursor down and then to the right to move the arm chair and the fireplace into view. Right mouse click and select Straighten from the local menu.

Press the Space Bar to exit the tool.



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Saving the Second Rendered Image With the desired view fully rendered on screen select Save As from the File menu at the top of the TurboCAD desktop. Under the Save As dialogue, select the desired Save in location from the dropdown menu at the top of the dialogue. Select JPG – TurboCAD for Windows JPEG from the Save as type dropdown menu. Enter the file name Arch Presentation V21 Tutorial [Interior].jpg. Select Save.

Allow time for the render to save. Minimize TurboCAD and check out the saved image. Note the clarity and crispness.

Close the image and maximize TurboCAD. Select the Wireframe icon two times, once to end the render and once to turn off perspective. Switch to Isometric SE view. Select Save at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.



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Named View – Session 2 Right mouse click on one of the Standard View icons to open the View palette. Activate Outside ISO Close the View palette.

Switch to Isometric SE view. Select the Examine tool on the Walkthrough toolbar. Select Look To Drawing Center from the View / Camera menu at the top of the TurboCAD desktop.

Left mouse click in the drawing and hold the mouse button down. Move the cursor downward to turn the model to a similar view, as indicated in the picture below.

Select the Walk tool on the Walkthrough toolbar. Left mouse click in the drawing and hold the mouse button down. Move the cursor upward to move in on the model.



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Select the Slide tool on the Walkthrough toolbar. Left mouse click in the drawing and hold the mouse button down. Move the cursor downward to move the model upward and to center horizontally it on screen - and then to the right to center it vertically. Right mouse click and select straighten from the local menu.

Press Esc to deselect the Walkthrough tool. With the desired view achieved, right mouse click on one of the Standard View icons to open the View palette. Select New View. Enter SkyView in the New View dialogue and click OK. Close the view palette.



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Paper Space Setup Because the tutorial has already run so many pages there will not be time to create a new Title Block from scratch, but one will be inserted with a (new to V17) function that is available. User with older versions will need to copy and paste from the file that is being referred to in the steps to come. Select the Paper 1 tab at the bottom of the desktop.

Right mouse click on the Paper 1 tab and select From Template from the local menu.

Locate the supplied file DBC 8.5x14 PaperSpace Title Block [v16].tcw and click Open. This could have been any file with any number of paper space pages, not just a template or a file with only the title block. The file that is being used was actually a file created when writing the Face Frame Dresser tutorial but it was pared down to what it is for delivery with this tutorial. It is a V16 file so it should open in V16 – V21 without issue.

Select Paper 1 and click OK. Because it has the same name as the one that already exists it will be renamed automatically.
