AutoCAD House Plan Tutorial: Draw a Floor Plan Step by Step
A house plan in AutoCAD comes down to seven steps. Set your units and layers, draw the walls, cut openings for doors and windows, add furniture and fixtures, dimension and annotate, lay the drawing out on a sheet at scale, and export a PDF. This tutorial walks through each step with the commands you will use, and it flags the points where Irish projects, which are metric and regulated, need extra care.
The example is a small two-bedroom house, but the method scales to extensions, renovations and full dwellings.
TL;DR
Set units to millimeters and create layers before you draw a single line. Fixing this later costs far more time.
Draw the outer wall outline first, then offset it for wall thickness, and use multilines or offsets for internal walls.
Keep doors and windows as blocks on their own layers so you can edit them everywhere at once.
Draw at full size in model space. Set the scale only when you build the layout (paper space), then export to PDF.
For Irish work, check your drawing against the Building Regulations guidance (the Technical Guidance Documents) and the standards your local authority expects.
Table of Contents
Before you draw: units, scale and layers
Most beginner floor plans go wrong in the first five minutes, not in the drawing itself. A plan drawn in the wrong units, or with everything on layer 0, becomes painful to dimension, print and share.
Set your drawing units
In Ireland you work in millimeters. Autodesk’s documentation describes setting units through the Drawing Setup dialog: you pick the unit, the length type and the precision, and decide whether objects inserted from drawings in other units should be scaled. In plain AutoCAD you can reach the same settings with the UNITS command. Choose Decimal, precision 0, and millimeters as the insertion scale. If you want a longer walk-through of the whole setup, our guide to AutoCAD architectural drawing setup covers templates and settings in more depth.
A practical rule: 1 drawing unit equals 1 mm. A 4.2 m living room is then drawn as 4200 units long. You never type a unit symbol; you just type the number.
Draw at full size
You always draw the building at its real size (1:1) in model space. Scale comes later, when you create a layout and set the viewport. If you want to understand why, read our explanation of model space vs paper space. Autodesk’s own onboarding material also describes layouts as the preferred way to organize and plot: viewports show model-space geometry at a chosen scale, while the layout usually carries the title block and annotations.
Create a layer structure
Open the Layer Properties Manager (LA) and create layers by function. A simple set for a house plan:
Layer name | Purpose | Suggested color | Lineweight |
A-WALL | External and internal walls | White/black | 0.35 mm |
A-DOOR | Door leaves and swings | Green | 0.18 mm |
A-GLAZ | Windows | Cyan | 0.18 mm |
A-FURN | Furniture and fixtures | Grey | 0.13 mm |
A-DIMS | Dimensions | Red | 0.13 mm |
A-TEXT | Room names and notes | Yellow | 0.13 mm |
A-HATCH | Hatching and fills | Grey | 0.09 mm |
A-GRID | Construction lines and grid | Blue | 0.09 mm |
The names follow a common discipline-prefix pattern, but use whatever your office or college standard requires. What matters is consistency. Lineweights differ in practice, so treat the table as a starting point.
Also create a layer for construction lines. They are useful for laying out grids and room positions, and we explain how in AutoCAD construction lines for architects.
Draw the external walls
Switch to the A-WALL layer. Turn on Ortho (F8) and Object Snap (F3) so lines stay straight and snap to endpoints.
Type REC (rectangle) and click a start point. Enter @8400,6000 for an outer footprint of 8.4 m by 6 m.
Type X (explode) and select the rectangle so each side becomes a separate line. This helps with trimming later.
Type O (offset), enter the wall thickness, for example 300 for a cavity wall, then click each outer line and then a point to the inside.
Autodesk’s quick start guide follows the same logic for a simple floor plan: draw the exterior rectangle, then use OFFSET to create the inside wall face. Their example uses imperial units (9 inches), so replace the value with your own metric wall thickness.
Wall thickness depends on your construction. A 215 mm block wall with insulation and finishes will differ from a 100 mm internal partition. Use the thickness from your wall build-up, not a guess.
Clean the corners
Use F (fillet) with radius 0 and click two lines at each corner to join them cleanly. Use TR (trim) to remove overlaps. Click the corner, check it, and move on.
Add the internal walls
You have two sensible options.
Offset and trim. Draw a centerline for each partition, offset it by half the partition thickness on each side, then trim the result. It is slow, but it gives you full control and works in every AutoCAD version.
Multiline. For quick double-line walls, Autodesk’s guide notes that AutoCAD LT uses DLINE while full AutoCAD uses MLINE to draw double-line interior walls. With MLINE, set the justification to Zero, scale to your wall thickness (for example 100), and use MLEDIT to clean up the intersections.
Whichever method you choose, work from a plan. Sketch the layout on paper first: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen/living area, a hall. Lay out room sizes with dimensions before you draw, because moving a wall in the finished drawing breaks everything attached to it.
Check room sizes against guidance
Irish housing has real design guidance behind it. The Design Manual for Quality Housing gives guidance on site layouts and on the internal layouts of individual social housing dwellings, and it offers standard internal layouts in ACAD format for download. Even if you are not designing social housing, opening those DWG files shows you how a professional layout is drawn and annotated.
Cut openings for doors and windows
Once the walls are in, mark the openings.
Draw construction lines or use OFFSET to mark the opening position, for example 900 mm from a corner.
Offset a second line by the door width, such as 900 mm for a standard internal door, or the window width.
Use TR to trim the wall lines between the two marks. Run a line across the opening to close the wall ends.
Make doors and windows into blocks
Draw one door on the A-DOOR layer: the leaf as a rectangle, the swing as an arc (ARC with Start, Center, End). Then use B (block) to turn it into a block named DOOR-900, with the hinge point as the base point. Insert it with I, rotating and mirroring as needed.
When you later change your mind about the door style, you redefine the block once and every copy updates. If you want to learn when to use BLOCK and when to use WBLOCK, our trainer tips on BLOCK vs WBLOCK explain how to build a tidy library of reusable parts.
For windows, draw the wall opening, then three parallel lines across it for frame and glass, and block that too. Keep a few standard widths: 600, 900, 1200 and 1800 mm cover most residential openings.
Use the Architecture toolset if you have it
AutoCAD 2027 includes an Architecture toolset with a library of more than 8,800 architectural components and faster placement of walls, doors and windows. If your subscription includes it, wall, door and window objects can speed the work and keep the data intelligent. Learning the manual 2D method first is still worthwhile, because it teaches you what those objects are doing and works in any version.
Add furniture, fixtures and hatching
Switch to A-FURN and insert blocks for beds, a sofa, kitchen units, a bath and WC. You can draw your own or build a small library from your own symbols. Keep fixtures at real sizes: a double bed is roughly 1500 by 2000 mm, a standard single bed around 900 by 1900 mm.
For floor finishes, wall poché and material fills, use the H (hatch) command on the A-HATCH layer. Our practical guide to AutoCAD hatch patterns shows which patterns suit architectural drawings and how to set the scale so they do not turn into solid black blobs.
Dimension and annotate the plan
A plan with no dimensions is just a picture. Contractors, engineers and planners read the numbers.
Set up a dimension style
Type D to open the Dimension Style Manager. Create a new style, for example ARCH-50, and set:
Arrow type to Architectural tick or a small closed filled arrow
Text height so it reads at about 2.5 mm on the printed sheet (at 1:50 that is a text height of 125 in model space)
Units to decimal, precision 0, no unit suffix
Overall scale to match your intended plot scale, or use annotative dimensions
The annotative option is the easier one for most beginners, because the dimension adjusts to the viewport scale automatically.
Dimension in chains
Use DIMLINEAR (DLI) for the first dimension, then DIMCONTINUE (DCO) to chain the next ones from it. Add a second string outside it for overall lengths, using DIMBASELINE or a fresh linear dimension. A typical house plan carries three tiers: openings and wall positions, internal room sizes, and the overall length.
Room names and notes
Use MTEXT or TEXT on the A-TEXT layer for room names and floor areas. For notes that point to something, use MLEADER. Keep text heights consistent; two sizes (one for room names, one for notes) is plenty.
Check the finished plan
Before you plot, run through this list:
Total of the room dimensions adds up to the overall dimension
No stray lines on layer 0 (use LAYWALK or freeze layers one at a time to find them)
Every door has a swing and every window has glazing lines
Run PURGE and AUDIT to clear unused items and fix minor errors
Use DIST to spot-check two or three critical measurements against your sketch
This last pass catches most of the mistakes reviewers find, such as a door swing that hits a wall or a bathroom 100 mm too narrow.
Irish and metric conventions to keep in mind
If your plan is going to a local authority, a certifier or a builder, a few points matter beyond drawing technique.
Work in millimeters, and show levels in meters. This is standard in Irish practice.
Know the technical guidance. The Building Regulations come with Technical Guidance Documents. TGD A on structure says floor-to-floor and ceiling-to-ceiling heights should not exceed 2.7 m in the situations it covers, so read the relevant clause before fixing storey heights in a drawing.
Understand certification. For works subject to certification, the Code of Practice for inspecting and certifying buildings describes a Design Certificate, a Certificate of Compliance on Completion and an inspection plan. Your drawings feed that process, so they need to be clear and consistent.
Renovating an older home? Traditional Irish houses often follow a direct-entry plan, where the hearth sits away from the door, or a lobby-entry plan, where hearth and door are at the same end, as described in the homeowner’s handbook on traditional buildings. Knowing this helps you read and draw an existing survey correctly.
Energy upgrades to old buildings. Official guidance recommends a whole-building approach and care not to harm the building’s character or raise the risk of long-term deterioration. Show existing and proposed construction clearly on your drawings.
The same Code of Practice also gives a useful perspective: the Building Control Authority sees submitted documents as essential for transparency and a compliance culture, although its role is not a full technical check of every design. In other words, the responsibility for a correct drawing stays with you and the design team.
If an existing house needs a structural assessment, for instance before an extension, the engineer will want a clean, accurate DWG as a base. Specialist guidance on seismic vulnerability assessment of existing buildings shows how structural analysis builds on well-organized geometry, which is another reason to keep your layers and walls tidy.
Lay out the sheet and export
Now turn the model into a printable drawing.
Click a Layout tab and set the page size, for example A3 or A1, under the Page Setup Manager.
Insert your title block as a block or xref.
Create a viewport (MV or the Layout ribbon) and set its scale, for example 1:50 for a house plan or 1:100 for a larger one.
Lock the viewport so the scale does not shift when you zoom.
Put dimensions, notes and a north point on the layout or in annotative form.
Export to PDF
Autodesk’s documentation says to use PLOT or EXPORTPDF for model space or a single layout, EXPORTPDF for all layouts, and PUBLISH for selected layouts, multiple drawings or a sheet set. Pick a PDF preset to suit the purpose: high quality for print, smaller files for email.
To send several sheets at once, Autodesk explains that you Ctrl-click the layout tabs, choose Publish Selected Layouts, select PDF and a preset, and then choose a multi-sheet file or one PDF per layout.
Save a DWG as well. Many consultants will ask for it, and use ETRANSMIT to bundle the drawing with its xrefs and fonts.
From plan to elevations, sections and 3D
A 2D floor plan is the base for the rest of the set. In plain AutoCAD you project elevations by drawing horizontal construction lines from the plan and adding the heights above them: floor level, window head, eaves and ridge. For sections, you cut through the plan, copy the cut line’s geometry across and add the levels.
For a 3D model, you can use EXTRUDE on the closed wall outlines (via PRESSPULL), set a height such as 2400 mm, then cut openings with SUBTRACT. If you use the Architecture toolset, display sets control which objects show and how walls, doors and windows appear in different views, so one model can produce plan, elevation and 3D views.
Once you want the plan, section, schedule and 3D view to update together, you are into BIM territory, and that is where Revit does the job better. Our overview of why AutoCAD and Revit both matter to architects explains how the two fit together.
Our perspective: learn on a real house
We have taught AutoCAD for years, and the pattern is always the same. Students who drill commands in isolation, one tool at a time, can pass a quiz and still freeze when they face a blank screen and a client sketch. Students who draw a whole house from the first line to the exported PDF learn the order of decisions: units first, layers second, walls before openings, dimensions before layouts.
The most common mistakes we see are drawing at the wrong scale, placing everything on one layer and typing dimension text over the real measurement. All three are habits, not skill gaps, and all three are fixed by repeating a complete project a few times. Do the house in this tutorial once for accuracy, then again at speed, then a third time with a different layout. By the third round the commands are automatic and you are thinking about design.
If you are a student, also read what AutoCAD students must know and the getting started guide so you are not learning bad habits from day one.
— Steve
Take it further with a guided project
If you would rather follow a full project with a trainer than piece together videos, our AutoCAD Training course takes you from beginner to expert through real-world practice, and costs €79 as a one-off payment. It includes completion certificates, downloadable notes, direct trainer support and lifetime access to the materials, and it is backed by a money-back guarantee.
If your goal is BIM work, the Revit course is also €79 as a one-off, and you can compare both on our blog for free guidance first.
FAQ
How long does it take to draw a house plan in AutoCAD?
A simple two-bedroom plan takes a beginner a few hours once the setup is clear, and an experienced drafter much less. Most of the time goes into planning the layout and dimensioning, not into the drawing commands themselves. Expect your first one to take a full day and your third to take a fraction of that.
Should I use AutoCAD or Revit for a house plan?
Use AutoCAD for 2D drafting, details and quick plans, and Revit when you want one model that generates plans, sections, elevations and schedules together. Many practices use both. Learning AutoCAD first gives you the drawing fundamentals that make Revit easier.
What scale should a house plan be drawn at?
Draw it at 1:1 in model space, in millimeters. Set the scale in the layout viewport when you print: 1:50 is common for a house plan and 1:100 for larger buildings. Check the scale your local authority or client requires.
Can I use free house plan templates?
Yes, for learning. The Design Manual for Quality Housing offers standard internal layouts in ACAD format for download, which are good for studying drawing structure. For a real submission, always draw or verify against your own site and the current Building Regulations.
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