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Drawing and editing walls in MacDraft

Creating walls is important when drawing all types of plans. The control you have over the walls can help to speed up your design process and make it easier to manage your drawings. MacDraft has a bunch of tailored tools to help you draw and edit walls in your plans.

What We Will Learn
In this tutorial we will be learning how to use the new wall/parallel line tools using the following skills:

What are Parallel Lines?
Parallel lines are two lines who sit next to each other which if you extended them infinitely they would never meet. This is a mathematical description of what they are and although that is true, in MacDraft they are primarily used for creating walls in your floor plans and diagrams. For the rest of this tutorial I will refer to these lines/tools as both parallel lines and walls as there will be many of you that call them one or the other!

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Above are the 5 different wall tools. Select the Parallel Line tool (you will see options apear at the top for the wall you are about to draw) and draw a single parallel line in the document. Select the parallel line when you have placed it and you will see the right panel change to show you your options.

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Parallel Line Options

Resize Options

Now we have taken a look at all the tools and options, let’s play around with parallel lines in MacDraft.

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Step 2 - Drawing Parallel Polylines (Open Walls)
In Part 2 select the Parallel Polyline tool. This allows us to create a chain of walls.

You will notice a set of black lines and a set of orange lines in part 2. With the Parallel Polyline tool selected, use the black line as a guide and click on the end points of the black lines to create the shape in the first image below. To end the polyline, double click when placing your final point.

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Make sure the Arrow tool is selected and click the parallel polyline you have just drawn to select it. You will see editing handles on the parallel line, select and drag the handles and line them up with the orange line. This is a way of manually moving and editing walls in MacDraft 7.

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Step 3 - Drawing Parallel Polygons (Closed Walls)
In Part 3, select the Parallel Polygon tool and follow the lines to create a room. This tool works in the same way as the parallel polyline too, so double click to place the last point (the last point is the one before the point you placed first, as the connecting wall is created automatically for you).

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

With the Arrow tool active, select the room and use the options in the right panel to add corners and change other options. By default the thickness of the wall should be 6-1/8”, change this to 8’ and notice all walls change size.

MacDraft Wall Drawing Tools

Step 4 - Extruding Parallel Lines (Adding single walls to existing walls)
In Part 4 select the pre drawn room and then the select the Extrude Parallel line tool. Move your cursor towards where the line meets the room and click, make sure you click the wall and not the line. The wall will start to draw, place it on the other end of the line.

MacDraft Icon
MacDraft Icon

Make sure the new set of walls are selected again and with the Extrude Parallel Polylines tool click where the right horizontal lines meets the wall, drag the mouse to the next point and click, then drag the mouse up and click on the wall again. This will add a new section to the walls.

MacDraft Icon
MacDraft Icon

Now you have the walls you want to change the thickness of selected, go back to the Parallel Line Options in right panel, enter a new value in the Thickness field and press the enter key. The new thickness will be applied to the walls you had selected. To exit the thickness editing mode, either click the Select Segment button again, or press the Escape key on your keyboard.

MacDraft Icon
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