Areas

In AutoCad 2008 it seems they still haven't resolved the issue of
displaying the area of objects on the drawing - a floorplan with
columns, say. I still use an old custom routine for this but it seems
by now someone would have thought of a way of combining this
functionality within something like the HATCH command, such that any
amendments to the hatch boundary would have a corresponding impact on
the displayed value - or am I missing something?

 

I should add that the fact that listing a hatch object gives you its
area in units² suggests that the capability is already there, just not
implemented.

 

As Autodesk bought REVIT a couple of years ago, why can't they take
some of it's good points and put them in AutoCAD? I refer to the room
tags which give area information. I know you would need to designate
lines as room bounding same as REVIT does for walls but they have the
code so how dificult is it to copy it over?

I do a lot of space areas for retail design and this would be ideal.
At present I draw a polyline on a specific layer (area outlines) then
look at it's properties. When I change the shape of the space I adjust
the polyline but it would be good if it was more automatic.

John

 

Ranger a écrit :

Hello,

You can give a look here : http://www.delicad.com/autocad/activeline_pro.php

It is in french, but I can translate it if anyone is interested.

Philippe

 

Actually, there's a link there to an english translation. Yes, this is
a good utility - but I really think that something like this should be
just built in to AutoCad 'out-of-the-box'. Bizarrely, we use both
square feet and square metres in the UK, so it would be useful if the
'out-of-the-box' utility also included the ability to display the area
in a variety of ways simultaneously. Another 'feature' would the
ability to declare a slightly smaller area than was actually measured
- equivalent to the scale factor option of associative dimensions.

As I mentioned, I have a lisp routine that does all this but it's a
little dissatisfying as it's not easily portable, i.e. you can't send
your drawing to someone else and expect that because they're using the
same version of the software, they'll be able to figure out how to
implement the routine.

I have a some similar ideas about AutoCad's handling of revision
clouds, xrefs and drawing issues - but I guess that's for another
day...

 

They did, it's called AutoCAD Architecture. It has the room/area
capability you are talking about. AutoCAD is the base they build the
vertical products on.

 

Good to know. I'll check it out... but I still wish it was a feature
of the vanilla edition.