Developing Drawing Strategies: Part 1 - AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required - page 130

Now that the openings are complete, you can place doors and door swings
in their appropriate doorways. In doing this, you'll be introduced to two new
objects and a few new commands, and you'll have an opportunity to use the
OFFSET and TRIM commands in new, strategic ways.
Creating Doors
In a floor plan, a rectangle or a line for the door and an arc showing the path
of the door swing usually indicates a pivot door. The door's position varies, but
it's most often shown at 90° from the closed position (see Figure 4.41). The best
rule I have come across is to display the door in such a way that others working
with your floor plan will be able to see how far, and in what direction, the door
will swing open.
FiGuRE 4.41 Possible ways to illustrate pivot doors
The cabin has four openings. Two of them need swinging doors, which open
90°. The main entry is a sliding glass door, and the closet is accessed by a pair of
bi-fold doors. Drawing each type of door will require a different approach.
Drawing Swinging Doors
The swinging doors are of two widths: 3 ′ (915 mm) for exterior and 2 ′ -6 ″ (762 mm)
for interior (refer to Figure 4.1 earlier in this chapter). In general, doorway open-
ings leading to the outside are wider than interior doors, with bathroom and
bedroom doors usually being the narrowest. For the cabin, you'll use two sizes
of swinging doors. If multiple doors of the same width existed in this design, you
could draw one door of each size and then copy them to the other openings as
required.
To accomplish this, we'll start with the back door (on the left side of the floor
plan). The only difference between the back door and the bathroom door is size,
so you'll learn how to copy and modify the back door, sizing it to it the opening
for the bathroom. It's a step far too many AutoCAD users overlook, but taking
a moment to develop a basic plan such as this one is certain to help you better
understand what you're drawing while making you a more productive user.