Clerestory windows sit above the standard floor plan cut plane, so they don’t appear automatically the way a normal window does. To show them in plan, you draw them with dashed lines at a thinner or equal line weight compared to walls and other cut elements. This convention tells anyone reading the drawing that the window exists but isn’t being sliced through at the cut plane height.
Why Clerestory Windows Don’t Show Up Automatically
A floor plan is a horizontal slice through the building, typically taken at about 4 feet (1.2 meters) above the floor. Everything the cut plane passes through, like walls, standard windows, and doors, gets drawn with solid lines at a heavier line weight. Clerestory windows, which often start at 8 feet or higher, sit well above that slice. Because they’re never “cut” by the plan, most drafting conventions and BIM software either hide them entirely or require you to take extra steps to make them visible.
The Dashed-Line Convention
The universal rule for showing elements above the cut plane is simple: use dashed lines. In architectural drafting, dashed lines on a floor plan signal “this object is overhead” or “this object is above the slice you’re looking at.” You’ll see the same convention used for beams, skylights, roof overhangs, and soffits.
For clerestory windows specifically, draw the window opening in the wall using dashed lines. The line weight should be equal to or thinner than the solid lines representing the cut wall below. This hierarchy keeps the plan readable. The solid, heavier wall lines communicate structure, while the lighter dashed lines communicate something present but not at the cut height. If you’re drafting by hand or in generic 2D CAD, a standard hidden linetype (short, evenly spaced dashes) works well.
Layer Naming in CAD
The U.S. National CAD Standard (based on AIA layer guidelines) doesn’t have a dedicated “clerestory” layer, but it does provide height-related naming that you can use. The glazing layer group includes both full-height and partial-height designations:
- A-GLAZ-FULL for full-height glazing
- A-GLAZ-PRHT for partial-height glazing
You can also append height codes like 06FT or FULL to minor group fields. In practice, many firms create a dedicated layer for overhead or above-cut elements (something like A-GLAZ-ABOV or A-WALL-CLRS) and assign a dashed linetype to it. The key is consistency across your drawing set. Whatever naming convention your office uses, make sure clerestory windows live on a layer with a dashed linetype so they read correctly when plotted.
Showing Clerestory Windows in Revit
Revit handles windows differently from most other elements. Windows, casework, and generic models are the only categories that can appear in plan view even when they sit above the cut plane and below the top clip plane. When they do appear this way, Revit draws them using their projection lines (as seen from above) rather than cut lines. This means a clerestory window can show up in your plan without being cut through, but you may need to adjust your view range to make it happen.
Open the floor plan view, then access its properties in the Project Browser and click Edit next to the View Range parameter. The view range has three horizontal planes: Top, Cut Plane, and Bottom. Make sure your Top clip plane is set high enough to include the clerestory windows. If the top of the clerestory sits at 10 feet, your Top plane needs to be at or above 10 feet.
If the windows still don’t appear correctly, the issue may be inside the window family itself. Revit window families have their own internal cut plane that controls how they display when sliced. To fix this, open the family editor, navigate to the family’s plan view, and adjust the cut plane elevation within that view’s properties. Once you reload the family into your project, the display should update. For a quick diagnostic, isolate one of the clerestory windows, apply a section box, and resize it to confirm whether the display issue is related to where the element is being cut.
If you need dashed lines on specific windows in a specific area of your plan, a Plan Region is another option. A Plan Region lets you define a localized view range that differs from the rest of the floor plan, so you can raise the cut plane in just the zone where clerestory windows occur.
Showing Clerestory Windows in AutoCAD Architecture
In AutoCAD Architecture, the most flexible approach is to create a custom display block for the window’s plan representation. The block itself can be straightforward, just lines and arcs placed on Layer 0 with ByBlock properties for color, linetype, lineweight, and plot style. The dashed linetype gets applied through the display settings of the style override, not baked into the block geometry. This keeps things clean and editable.
One important technique: make the overall width of the custom block exactly one drawing unit. This way, when AutoCAD Architecture scales the block to match each window’s actual width, it works correctly across multiple window sizes without needing a separate block for every dimension. You add this custom display block as a style-level override in the Plan Display Representation for your clerestory window style, so it only affects windows assigned to that particular style.
Getting the Graphic Hierarchy Right
Regardless of your software, the goal is the same: make clerestory windows visible without competing with elements that are structurally more important at the cut plane. A few principles help:
- Dashed lines for overhead elements. This is non-negotiable in standard architectural drafting. Solid lines mean “at or below the cut plane.” Dashed lines mean “above it.”
- Thinner or equal line weight. Clerestory window lines should never be heavier than the walls they sit in. A line weight one step thinner than your wall cut lines keeps the hierarchy clear.
- Consistent annotation. Label clerestory windows with their sill height or a note like “CLR” so the reader immediately understands why they’re dashed. On a busy plan, the dashed lines alone can be ambiguous without context.
- Show the wall below. The wall that the clerestory window sits in still gets cut by the plan, so it appears as a solid line. The dashed window opening floats within or adjacent to that solid wall representation, depending on whether the wall is full-height or steps down at the clerestory.
If your clerestory windows sit in a wall that rises above a lower roof section (a common configuration), you may also need to show the wall below in solid lines and the upper wall portion in dashed lines, with the clerestory openings dashed within that upper portion. This layered approach takes more drafting effort but gives the reader a complete picture of what’s happening vertically, all within a single horizontal drawing.