Five Tips For Creating Depth in Your Elevation Drawings in AutoCAD

More complicated designs usually translate into more lines you need to draw in order to illustrate your design. Unfortunately in most cases more lines can make it harder to understand a drawing, especially when you throw in hatch patterns like bricks and roofing. To avoid the frustration that a flat and busy elevation drawing may cause, this article will help you find five ways to help you add depth to your drawings and make them "pop".

Foreground, Middle Ground, Background

Before you even begin drawing the first line of your elevation drawing, take just a few minutes to study your floor plan. Essentially what you want to do is imagine you have three different planes: a foreground, middle ground, and background. Determine which elements on your facade you want to lie in the foreground, middle ground, and background.

Set Layers

Be organized with your drawings. It's easy to forget to set a layer in your drawing so be proactive by setting the layers immediately and naming them accordingly. That way you'll start off thinking of layers from the beginning and you can simply select what layer you want to work on as you go.

Set Line Weights

It's always a good idea to assign different line weights to your foreground, middle ground, and background planes. As a general rule of thumb, use thicker lines for the foreground and thinner lines as you move toward the background. This will help you create a subtle but noticeable sense of depth in your drawing.

Test It Out

If you're new to working with line weights a good way to test your choice of weights is to occasionally do a plot preview. This way you'll see what your drawing will look on paper before you press Print. This'll save you a lot of time and paper.

Create a Template

Once you've invested all your time in drawing your elevation and making sure to be precise and organized, you may not want to go through that process over and over again for every project you work on. Save yourself the time and headache. Once you have a recipe that works for you, save it as a template or at least make notes on your line weight selection so that you can reference it and create a standard that you adhere to.   Try using these tips to help you create high-quality elevation drawings. A well-organized and well-thought-out drawing can be the difference between "a bunch of lines" and an actual architectural drawing.