Skip to main content
Derek Cutsinger/2 min read

Dimensioning Walls and Sprinklers in AutoCAD: A Step-by-Step Guide

Construction Document Workflow

1

Schematic Design

Conceptual layout — establishes overall design direction.

2

Design Development

Refine systems, materials, and dimensions.

3

Construction Documents

Detailed drawings and specs ready for permit and bid.

4

Construction Administration

Respond to RFIs and submittals during build.

Master Revit at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Revit Certification teaches BIM modeling, construction documentation, and the workflow used across architecture and construction firms.

This lesson is a preview from our Revit Certification Course Online (includes software). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

This AutoCAD tutorial walks through dimensioning walls and sprinklers in autocad, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Now, unfortunately, I had a whole dimension string, and this sometimes happens—I wanted to show you that while you're dimensioning, you might find a mistake here or there. So let's go back and try that one more time. Type DI and press TAB to find the wall.

Let’s go down this row of sprinklers. Okay. In some of these areas, they're quite typical.

So what we can do is just dimension one. Then go to Annotate > Text, and we’ll add "TYP." to indicate it's typical. These classrooms we don’t have to worry about because they have ceiling tiles and are all light hazard.

Let’s move on and continue. Since we’ve already called out that these are 10 feet apart, we’re just going to continue this string of sprinklers here. Type DI and ensure we’re going in the correct direction. Try not to select anything else—you may have to move around a bit.

There we go. Go ahead and type DI again, and hit TAB. Do that one more time—type DI and press TAB.

Okay. We have these restroom sprinklers. Sometimes you have to find a good spot, so you don’t create an extra dimension you don’t want.

You might think this is overspaced. There are some rules, like the small room rule, and if it’s light hazard, we can be up to 9 feet off of one wall. We won’t get into that too much in this course, but for the purposes of our annotations and the project, we’ll leave the sprinkler as is.