Draws a double-hung window two ways. WINDOWELEV draws the elevation — outer casing, frame, sill, meeting rail, both sashes and any number of glazing bars. WINDOWPLAN draws the plan — cutting the opening through the wall, with jambs, glass line and sill projection.
What WindowSymbol does
Everything is measured from the frame opening — the hole the window sits in — because that is the dimension an architect actually specifies and the one a builder sets out. Give it either as two corners or as a corner plus a width and height.
How to use it
- Load the routine with
APPLOAD, or put it on your support file search path. - Type
WINDOWELEVand give the frame opening, the casing and sash widths, and the glazing bar layout. - Type
WINDOWPLAN, pick the centre of the window on the inside wall face, then a point on the outside face.
How it works
The elevation offsets four things from the opening: the outer casing, out by the casing width in both directions; the sill, projecting past the opening at the bottom; the meeting rail, at half the opening height; and the glass line of each sash, in by the sash rail width.
Glazing bars divide each sash independently, so a window with two panes across and three rows gets six lights per sash, twelve in total.
The plan’s second pick does two jobs at once. Picking a point on the outside face fixes the wall thickness, and the direction between the two points establishes which way the wall faces — so the window comes out square to the wall at any angle, with no need to tell it the rotation.
The wall is then broken at the two jambs and the opening closed off.
No menu is loaded or swapped. The original drove the screen menu on every run and restored the previous one on the way out. Screen menus have not existed in AutoCAD for many releases, and swapping a user’s menu underneath them was disruptive even when they did. The prompts do the same job.
Notes and limits
- Set out from the frame opening, the dimension that gets specified.
- The plan works at any wall angle and any thickness.
- Glazing bars are per sash, in both directions.
- One undo group per command.
Download and details
| Name | WindowSymbol — draw a double-hung window in elevation and in plan |
| Download | WindowSymbol.lsp — 16.8 KB, plain AutoLISP source. Downloads directly; no zip to unpack. |
| Type | AutoCAD AutoLISP routine |
| Commands | WINDOWELEV, WINDOWPLAN |
| Requires | nothing beyond a CAD platform with AutoLISP. |
| Source size | 16.8 KB, 408 lines |
| Error handling | Yes — a *error* handler restores every system variable it changed, on cancel as well as on error. |
| Undo | The whole operation is wrapped in a single undo group, so one U reverses all of it. |
| Compatibility | AutoCAD (any release with AutoLISP), BricsCAD, ZWCAD, GstarCAD, ProgeCAD and other IntelliCAD-based platforms. AutoCAD LT needs a LISP enabler. No .NET, no ObjectARX, no installer. |
| Author | YZ, August 2026 |
| Licence | Free to use, supplied “as is” with no warranty. |
References
- WALLRUN LISP — walls with their own window and door openings
- FACEHOLE LISP — openings cut through other things
- HOUSESHELL LISP — the building it goes in
- More free AutoLISP routines on this site
- Wisey’s Steel Shapes — free structural steel section drawing program