AutoCAD Architecture is the Windows toolset for architectural design and drafting within AutoCAD. It represents buildings with objects such as walls, doors, windows and spaces, then uses those objects to produce drawings and property reports. The Architecture toolset is included with AutoCAD.
Building objects
A wall in AutoCAD Architecture can contain separate structural and finish components, each with its own thickness, offset and material. Wall styles define that construction, along with details such as the interior and exterior sides and the points used for dimensioning. Endcap styles control how components terminate at wall ends and openings. Importing a wall style also brings in the supporting styles it needs.
Doors and windows have their own styles for different operations and shapes. Door/window assemblies combine elements such as an entrance door, sidelights and a transom within a grid. Their components can receive materials and classifications, so the same modeled item also supplies information for its display and scheduling.
How AutoCAD Architecture displays objects
The Display System controls how a building object appears in different drawing types, viewing directions and levels of detail. Its settings work on individual components: a door frame, panel, glass and swing can each have different visibility and line properties. For example, the default door representations show the swing in plan and elevation while hiding it in a 3D view.
Drawing defaults provide the common appearance. A style override changes all objects using a particular style, while an object override changes an individual item. AutoCAD Architecture can therefore show the same building elements in several drawing contexts without a separate copy of their geometry for each representation.
Section drawings
Section lines define the part of a building model to cut. They can be straight or jogged, with controls for the section’s length, depth and height. From that boundary, AutoCAD Architecture can create a 2D section, a 3D section object or a live section view of the original model.
A 2D section removes hidden and overlapping lines and supports dimensions, material hatching and rules for line appearance. Subdivisions can distinguish nearby building parts from those farther away. Generated section objects retain a link to their source model, allowing model changes to be reflected when the section is updated; exploding the section breaks that relationship.
A live section keeps the original building objects instead of converting them into a new section object. Parts outside the cutting boundary can be hidden or displayed, with material settings controlling their appearance.
Spaces
Space objects describe enclosed areas of a building. You can generate an associative space by selecting a point within bounding geometry, or generate spaces across all valid boundaries. These spaces can follow changes to the surrounding building geometry through automatic or manual updates. Tags can be added as the spaces are created.
Zones group spaces according to a chosen organizational scheme. Their property data can be presented in schedule tables inside a DWG drawing or exported for use in spreadsheets and databases. AutoCAD Architecture supports XLS, CSV and TXT exports for space properties, while space evaluation documents export a selected set of properties to XLS or TXT.
Renovation plans
Renovation mode tracks existing, demolished and new construction within one drawing. Objects receive categories as you work, and renovation styles determine how those categories appear in plans, sections and elevations. You can switch between renovation, demolition and revision plan views without maintaining independent copies of the building for each stage.
The categories also affect editing behavior. Deleting an object in an active renovation session can mark it for demolition. Moving a door produces representations of the demolished door and its new location, together with the corresponding wall openings. Category assignments can also be changed manually when the automatic assignment needs correction.
Detail components
The architectural component library supplies reusable content for drawings. Detail Component Manager lets you move between component databases and locate individual items through a hierarchical tree and filters.
Layer standards
Layer key styles connect architectural object types with the project’s layer standard. As objects are added, AutoCAD Architecture creates the required layers using those definitions. Existing standards can be customized when a project needs a different naming or organization scheme.
