Dive into the details of architectural plans with an in-depth explanation of different door and window representations. Learn how to interpret variations such as hinge doors, sliding doors, foldable doors, regular windows, and sloping windows in a plane of a plant.
Key Insights
- The plane of a plant, a horizontal drawing about 4 feet from the ground, displays door and window details. This includes identifying hinge points, door directions, and the area where the door is closed.
- Various types of doors are represented differently in architectural plans. For example, double doors usually have one fixed door, sliding doors are shown as an assembly with a direction line, and foldable doors illustrate the hinge and fold points.
- Window representation in architectural plans can range from basic to detailed. While some plans show a simple line for the window, others may include the lower edge, glass area, outer edge, and even the frame details. However, overly detailed representations are less common as they raise expectations about specific research and meanings behind the lines.
When you are looking at a plan of plant, this is a plane that is generally drawn as a horizontal slice of about 4 feet, and half height looking down to the ground. So, right here is a drawing for a standard hinge door. And so you can see the gray filled in this area and that area, that is the wall.
This rectangle here is the door. This area here is the hinge point. Here is where the door touches the wall and this indicates the displacement here of how the door is closed.
This is representative, where typically a standard width of 1 1⁄2 or 1 3⁄4 inches is used for the width of the door, but we always show the hinge point and where the door is closed. Here we have a double door. With a double door, one is usually fixed or generally closed, the other is the dominant door.
Like with the simple door, we have our hinge points. And what you can see in some drawings is that they can have a pointed door in this area, which would mean that this is the door that is generally closed. Here we have foldable or closet doors.
Again, you can see that the door is hinged here. And it is foldable at the bottom here, so when they fold, this area here slides down and aligns with the bottom of the door right there. Here we have a sliding door.
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You can see that typically what is happening is that we are showing the door. Nowadays, sliding doors are usually bought as an assembly that has a frame that extends from here to here. It has the thinnest walls assembled there and it has the track that goes over the door.
Again, so here is a sliding door, it is an assembly, you can see that it slides to the left and right. Here is what they call a sliding door, so we can see the door here, we see the direction line. What you will see in some cases, is an arch, you can see the wall here, the wall here.
And then this is a discontinuous or pointed line that shows the line of the arch or opening that is above. In this last row there are different levels of detail and ways of representing a window. So imagine that you are in a room and you are standing right here.
Well, this is the lower edge of the wood that is at the bottom of the window. Here in the middle is the glass and here outside is the edge of the window on the outside of the building. If there was a brick, then the brick that is outside in this area would be shown.
Returning to the example, if you are standing here and right here in the middle is the glass, this is the lower part of the window inside and the lower part of the window outside. This is a sloping window and in this example it is a sloping window that opens inwards. You can see that it is showing more details, including the frame, also called Hamba, on this left side and the frame on the right.
So that's the detail of the wood. And then you can see here that they are showing a crossbeam that is an element between the two. And then they are also showing here the interior of the frame of the window, the exterior of the frame of the window.
And then the glazed in the window when it is closed. And then here, a double-hanging window, where again, we are showing the complete assembly. With less frequency you see a window represented in this way than in this other.
The reason is that the more detail is shown in something like a window frame or a double window, the more expectations are raised that the research has been done and that they are not just lines, but that they mean something in particular, and therefore, people use this type of representation more commonly, then they will have, for example, a window symbol. The symbol of the window, you know, the hexagon with the number or the letter, which then goes in the list of windows, in which the manufacturer is named and the specific window so that this level of detail in the floor plan does not have to be shown.