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Task Guide: Drafting a Glasshouse Botanical Conservatory Floor Plan

Alpha status (14 October 2026): XiCAD is planned and its public installer is not verified. This page describes the checked CADCraft foundation; XiKey integration is still in progress. Alpha is free today.

Scenario

You are drafting a structural and irrigation floor plan for a Victorian-style glasshouse botanical conservatory. You need to organize structural steel, glazing mullions, planting beds, and misting lines onto dedicated CAD layers, draft the symmetrical bay geometry using POLYLINE, OFFSET, TRIM, and ARRAY, place static valve and door blocks with attributes, and add associative linear and angular dimensions.

Step-by-Step Workflow

1. Set Units and Configure Layers in Layer Properties Manager

  1. Open a new metric drawing (Ctrl+N / Cmd+N) and type UNITS (UN) at the Command Line to set length units to Millimeters.
  2. Open Window ▸ Layers (LAYER / LA) and create layers with distinct ACI colors, linetypes, and lineweights:
    • A-GRID (Gray, CENTER linetype, 0.13 mm)
    • A-GLAZ-WALL (Cyan, Continuous, 0.35 mm)
    • L-PLANTER (Green, Continuous, 0.25 mm)
    • P-IRRIGATION (Blue, DASHED, 0.20 mm)
    • A-ANNO-DIMS (White/Black, Continuous, 0.18 mm)

2. Draft the Structural Bays and Glazing Walls

  1. Press F8 to enable ORTHO and F3 to enable Object Snap (OSNAP) (Endpoint, Midpoint, Intersection, Center, Perpendicular).
  2. On layer A-GRID, type LINE (L) to draw the longitudinal center axis (24000 mm) and first transverse column grid line (12000 mm), then type ARRAYRECT to repeat the structural bays every 4000 mm.
  3. Switch to A-GLAZ-WALL, type POLYLINE (PL) to trace the perimeter glass curtain wall and octagonal palm-house rotunda, then type OFFSET (O) with a distance of 250 mm inward to create the masonry curb wall.
  4. Use TRIM (TR) and FILLET (F) to clean the bay intersections, and use HATCH (H) with an available hatch pattern inside the masonry piers.

3. Insert Blocks with Attributes and Add Associative Dimensions

  1. Type BLOCK (B) to define a reusable misting-zone control valve symbol with an ATTDEF tag (VALVE_ID), then place instances along P-IRRIGATION using INSERT (I).
  2. Switch to A-ANNO-DIMS, run DIMLINEAR (DLI) to dimension the 4000 mm structural bay spacing and overall 24000 mm length, DIMANGULAR (DAN) for the 45° octagonal rotunda walls, and MLEADER (MLD) to call out tempered roof glazing specifications.

Sources