110 — Edge Miters

A miter is the angled cut on a panel’s vertical edge that lets two panels close a building corner against each other. It is the rarest feature in this reference: across both sample projects — 146 panels — exactly one carries a miter.

That rarity is the most useful thing to know about it. You will reach for this at a corner and almost nowhere else.

Note

A browser version covers part of this lesson. Open it here — it lists exactly which steps it does not cover, so you know what to come back to AutoCAD for.

Where it lives

Edge Miters are on Main Panel Details itself, and only there. There is no Miter command on the ConstructiVision menu, so unlike most features in this series there is no Route B — see lesson 101 for what that distinction means.

Each edge has its own group, Left Edge Miter and Right Edge Miter, and each group holds the same four things:

in each group

what it is

/

an angle box, in degrees

\

a second angle box, in degrees

Z Offset

the setback of the cut

Up Face

a picture of which face is up in the casting bed

The Up Face picture is display only: there is nothing to type into it. Beside the two groups sits Expansion Gap, with a Left and a Right box.

Working the corner

  1. Set the panel first. The miter is cut through the panel’s thickness, so thickness is what decides how deep the cut runs. Set Width and Thickness before the angle.

  2. Enter the angle on the edge that turns the corner. A square building corner is closed by two panels each cut at 45° — each takes half of the 90°.

  3. Leave the other edge at zero. A panel that turns one corner has one ordinary square edge meeting an ordinary panel. Only a short return panel — one that turns a corner at both ends — carries an angle in both boxes.

  4. Z Offset sets the cut back. Zero runs the cut through the full thickness, which is the usual case.

  5. OK redraws the panel. Nothing draws while the dialog is open.

The one real example

The single mitered panel in either sample project is Arlington Airport A, panel 100:

leftMiter   45°          rightMiter  0°
width       29'-0"       thickness   7 1/4"
gap left    8"           gap right   3/8"

On Main Panel Details it shows as 45° in the left group’s \ box, with 0° in its / box and Z Offset 0"; both right-edge boxes read 0°. Expansion Gap reads Left 8" and Right 3/8".

The pair of numbers on the bottom row is worth a look. Its right edge carries a routine 3/8” joint — the same value most panels in the corpus use — while its left edge, the mitered one, carries 8”. A gap that large is not an expansion joint; it is the corner geometry the miter is cutting into.

Note

Read that as a description, not a rule. This is one panel, and one panel is one observation. It shows what a real mitered corner looked like on a real job; it is not evidence that every mitered edge should carry a large gap, and the relationship between the two values has not been verified against the drawing.

The miter travels with the panel

The angle is stored on the panel, not on the sheet. When the site drawing attaches this panel to a wall line it reads the same stored value, which is how the corner closes on the building plan and not only on the panel elevation.

Watch the lesson

The video opens panel 100, reads both miter groups and the expansion gaps on Main Panel Details, clicks OK, and reopens the dialog: the left edge still reads 45° after the redraw.

Note

What the recording shows and what it does not. It shows that the stored 45° survives OK and the redraw: every miter and gap value is checked before OK and again on the reopened dialog. It does not show the cut itself in the drawing. The miter runs through the panel’s thickness, and this lesson does not measure the panel’s geometry.