AutoCAD: your first 30 minutes

Draw a house plan in 30 minutes

1. Units & layers. UNITS → architectural or mm. Create layers: WALL, DOOR, WINDOW, DIM, TEXT, FURN with colours.
2. Walls. Draw the outer rectangle with LINE/RECTANG, OFFSET 9″ for walls, TRIM openings; MLINE for internal 4½″ walls.
3. Doors & windows. Insert blocks — get free ones from our CAD blocks page.
4. Dimensions & text. DIMLINEAR / DIMCONTINUE; room names with MTEXT; set an annotative scale 1:100.
5. Print. Layout tab → viewport → scale 1:100 → plot to PDF (A3).

Values are typical teaching values — always use the loads, materials and codes of your actual project.

More quick-start guides

ETABS · SAFE · AutoCAD · Primavera P6 · Revit