What’s needed:
- A drafting board of course. Probably best to use one that will hold a twenty four inch wide by eighteen inch high sheet of paper.
- A Tee Square or Parallel Bar. This way you can draw the floor plan square. Accuracy is important. The Tee square is used on the left side of the drafting board to keep the drawing in square. This insures that your parallel lines are actually parallel.
- Two 45 degree drafting triangles. One of them needs to be around 10 inches in height.
- An Architectural Template at 1/4″ scale.
- Two sharp #2 lead pencils with eraser. #5 lead mechanical pencils will do just as well. (You can use a gum eraser if you wish. Not really necessary though.)
- 11″ x 17″ white printer paper. Transparent paper is preferable as it will aide you in tracing your drawing if you continue on with the rest of the lessons. (Vellum or Transparent Bond Paper)
- 1/2″ roll of Masking Tape.
Place the paper on the drafting board near the center with your tee square or parallel bar to make it square with the board. Once square, tape the corners (all four) to the board. This way your paper stays parallel to the drafting board.
With your scale, measure the top of the page to the center of the paper and with your triangle, draw a light vertical line from the top to the bottom of the sheet. Do the same thing horizontally. This will give you the center of the paper so that you can center your floor plan on the page.
Now you’re ready to begin the drawing.