AutoCAD drawings can contain a great deal of information about areas and distances, angles and coordinates, writes George Omura in ‘Introducing AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD LT 2010’ (www.wileyindia.com). “One of the first measurement tasks you’re likely to need to perform is measuring the area in a drawing. It might be the area of a site plan or the floor space of a commercial building,” he begins. “Before AutoCAD came along, finding the area in a drawing was a tedious and error-ridden job.”
There can, however, be different ways to measure an area. It is easy to measure an area that is completely bounded by objects, or a single, closed polyline or spline, the author instructs. “You can also find an area by selecting a set of points that defines the corners of a boundary. This method is useful for areas that have straight sides, such as a typical property line in a city grid.”
But when the area you want to measure has curves in its boundary or is just too complex to use the previous method, he recommends the use of hatch pattern. “Although the main purpose of the Hatch command is to place a hatch pattern in your drawing, hatch patterns can also tell you the area they occupy.”
What about cases where there is a gap and so you get an error message saying the area is not closed? Use the Gap Tolerance setting to tell AutoCAD to ignore gaps of a certain size, Omura advises. “You can also have the Hatch command place a polyline outline of the hatch area by turning on the Retain Boundaries option in the hatch and Gradient dialogue box…”
For the hands-on designer.
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Tailpiece
“To increase the quality of our research reports…”
“You hired better analysts?”
“No, we set a cap on the cut-paste portion, at 80 per cent of the total report, instead of the current 100!”
