Seeking blueprint drawings of windows and doors for art project!

May 14, 2009 7:25 AM

Is there an architect or graphic designer in the house? I need line/blue print style images of windows and doors for art pieces I am designing. Please help!

I am working on some art/architecture projects that require blue-print style line drawings of windows and doors. Not the floor plan style, but front-on views (I’m not articulating this well). Ideally these would be in illustrator or photoshop friendly formats. Is there anywhere online (or even in books) that have something like this? I have googled and I get are links to birds eye view images for architectural floor plans or exploded views from window manufacturers, which are not what I need.

Bonus for free, high resolution (I intend to blow them up fairly large) and downloadable, but I'm happy to shell out a meager sum for images that will suit my needs.

Metafilter pals please help me out!

Thanks!

posted by Ponderance to media & arts (16 answers total)

Google Sketchup can be used to either make these drawings, or you could download some from the Sketchup library.

To get the right "sketchy look" you can simply change the drawing style. You have a lot of flexibility here to customize the background color, line color, etc.
posted by odinsdream at 7:44 AM on May 14, 2009

I'll make them myself as a last resort, I really want something really clean and technical. I was guessing that people in the various design/building business had prefab clip art for this sort of thing.
posted by Ponderance at 7:54 AM on May 14, 2009

If you have time for it, go ahead and call up local architecture firms. One of them may be hip enough to let you stop by and scan one of their drawings. They may even have a digital version that they can give you.

I guess now all that's left is for everyone to sit on their hands and wait for an architecture MeFite to show up.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:59 AM on May 14, 2009

Google images > front elevation window? I'm seeing entire facades of houses in very low-res but you get the idea...
posted by TWinbrook8 at 8:07 AM on May 14, 2009

there are a few technical manuals you can download that will have elevational views of window if you poke around their websites for 'downloads' or 'specs' from manufacturers like Anderson and Marvin. They are PDF brochures, so you'll have to flip through them to find and extract the image. For example:

Clad Ultimate Insert Double Hung PDF
Wood Double Hung Series In-Sash Round Tops PDF
Architectural Springline™ Single-Hung Window PDF
posted by spoons at 8:33 AM on May 14, 2009

Have you tried istockphoto.com?

Some interesting results: door, house, house, house, door and window.

I don't see much that's just doors and windows, but there are several house blueprints in both illustration and photo format that you could probably extract bits from that you like. Istock prices are more than reasonable for something like this.
posted by bristolcat at 8:55 AM on May 14, 2009

If you have illustrator, open those pdfs in it and then use the trace tool to vectorize the window. If you go the google sketchup route (might be a tad cumbersome if you haven't used it before) then you can add dimension strings, etc. You can also turn on line extensions to give it that "architect" look.
posted by amanda at 8:56 AM on May 14, 2009

Also, it would seem like architects would have these huge libraries of vector images perfect for a multitude of uses but that is not so much the case. I was surprised at how low-fi some of the resources are for architects.
posted by amanda at 8:57 AM on May 14, 2009

Ponderance,
Please clarify: you don't want the old-fashioned blueprint drawings, but rather black-line drawings on white paper?

Also, do you want the typical drawing we include that has dimensions & notes or rather a nice clean line drawing of a window elevation?

I can easily create PDF file from CADD and that can be imported into photoshop. Either DWG or DXF (cannot remember) can be imported into Illustrator.
posted by mightshould at 8:59 AM on May 14, 2009

The CAD Block Exchange Network might prove to be of some help.

It contains a plethora of hardline drawings/details for all types of projects. Some ranging from the wonderful to the weird. The navigation is a bit weary, but you will be able to download free drawings in .dwg format which is illustrator friendly. If you wish to use Photoshop, you will have to rasterize the .dwg into an EPS format. This kills the 'crisp' nature of the lines and will not be very nice looking when blown up to a larger scale.

If CBEN doesn't provide any results, I would venture to the library and seek out any books that contain elevation drawings that suit your needs. Books on neoclassical architecture usually contain nice elevations that highlight windows/facades in detail. You can scan the images you like and then upload them into either Illustrator or CAD as an underlay and trace them.

Asking an architecture firm for project files may be difficult since design documents are copyrighted and some firms are very sensitive to dishing out their work for free. It is worth asking very nicely if they will be willing to provide .dwg files of window details. Most firms tend to have detail sets on file of various window types so that they can quickly drop them into construction docs.
posted by inqb8tr at 9:06 AM on May 14, 2009

Wikimedia has a number of architectural elevations. They are not particularly high-resolution, but that is the term I believe you need to be searching for.
posted by TedW at 9:55 AM on May 14, 2009

If you can find a copy of Ching's Building Construction Illustrated, perhaps at a local library, you may find what you're looking for.

to clarify, the "front-on view" (or more correctly, an on-plane upright view) is referred to by architects as an elevation.
posted by a halcyon day at 5:33 PM on May 14, 2009

As a halcyon day alludes to, you're looking for elevations of windows. Searching for window elevation in google image search brings up some items.
posted by LionIndex at 10:20 PM on May 14, 2009

I'll make them myself as a last resort, I really want something really clean and technical. I was guessing that people in the various design/building business had prefab clip art for this sort of thing.

I should clarify how simple Sketchup can be for this. Here is a window that I downloaded into Sketchup from the 3D warehouse. Someone else already designed it, I just dropped it into the scene.

I set the camera to face directly towards the window and specified that I wanted it to look like a line drawing (rather than a 3D wood and glass model, which is how it started), and then I added a few dimension lines to illustrate how you can customize it.

Then I exported it to an image file. Overall time was about three minutes, none of which involved me drawing the window. You could easily change the background and line colors to suit your purposes, as well as select from a wealth of other models.
posted by odinsdream at 8:52 AM on May 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

Holy crap, that's amazing!
posted by Ponderance at 10:33 AM on May 15, 2009

If you need assistance with this just let me know.
posted by odinsdream at 11:11 AM on May 15, 2009