Architectural Model Making Using A Laser Cutter

Step 3: 2D Drawing in AutoCAD

Now that a piece is measured, a 2D drawing of this piece needs to be created in AutoCAD. Properly setting up the drawing file in CAD is essential. The laser cutter I am using requires that linework be color coded. Red lines drawn in CAD tell the laser to cut through the chosen material and BLUE lines tell the laser to score the surface. The laser needs the drawing to be made using continuous solid lines.

Different laser cutters may not use these colors and the actual cutting process for a given laser cutter may vary from mine. I will document my cutter and it is likely that the cutter you may have access to is similar.

I make a 2D drawing of the measured piece in CAD by simply drawing lines on a “cut layer” or red colored layer.First though, these layers need to be set up.

I create two layers, one is made red (cut layer) and the other is blue (score layer). The pictures are annotated to show the steps once in the layer properties manager in CAD.

The roof plane that we measured needs to be drawn on the cut layer, since it will be cut out of my material. I simply draw lines to match the roof piece from the 3D model.

Once plotted to the laser cutter, the piece will be perfect at whatever scale I set the plotter (cutter) too. You can set the scale you want to cut at in the properties of the plotter as shown in the final image. Since the drawing was made at full scale, the plot scale can be made to whatever the user desires.

Note: it is important to turn of “plot with plot styles” and “plot object lineweights” or your cut will be wrong.