how do i measure square footage in my building?

[Anonymous]

hi,
i need to measure the gross and net area of my building. what is the most efficient way to do this in archicad

[Laszlo Nagy]

The Zone Tool is the one that can display area information. It can also be listed. You should probably use that one.

[Rick Thompson]

I normally select the floor slab and open the "Element Info" box.

[Anonymous]

I use a simple fill with the 'show area' toggled.

[fuzzytnth3]

The Zone tool in combination with Scheduling can preform the Gross and Nett areas calulations for you.

There is an option within the Zone tool to control it's behaviour so it will either calculate the nett or gross area.

[Arcadia]

I don't use Zone's at all as I have no need for them in the work i do and find them cumbersome. My solution for working out area's is to create a layer called "calcs" then use fills (color coded for different purposes if desired) drawn over the area's wanted (ie roof, overall building area, individual rooms etc). Then open the element information window from the palettes menu. When you click on the fill you get the area, perimeter etc. If you color the fills you can tell quickly if they need to be updated when something changes. Works for me anyway.

[fuzzytnth3]

What you describe is how the Zone tool works as well. But by using Fills instead you loose some of the power of Zone tool particularly in this case where the original query was how to calculate the Nett and Gross areas.

The Zone tool can do this quickly for you as I have shown above. Whereas to do the same thing with the Fill tool requires editing all your Fills and creating a second set of Fills to calculate the Gross.

The Zone tool also has the benefit that it can feed information into Opening and Finishes Schedules which save time and effort. Whereas the Fill tool can't feed Room Names, Wall and Floor Finishes into schedules

Don't be scared of the Zone tool, embrace it and make it your friend

[Arcadia]

Well that's all very well of course, but I don't need zones linked with room names or schedules or floor and ceiling finishes and ceiling hieghts etc. Like I said its cumbersome for my purposes when all I need to do is simply fill stretched over a particular area. It takes a couple of minutes to place the 3 or 4 that I need then i don't have to think about them again till I need the area's. Maybe one day I will really have a look at zones and see what I can do with them but other stuff is a higher priority for me at the moment.

[David Maudlin]

Arcadia wrote:
My solution for working out area's is to create a layer called "calcs" then use fills ... Then open the element information window from the palettes menu. When you click on the fill you get the area,...

The Fill Tool can show the area on the plan (check the "Show Area Text" box), and updates automatically as the fill is edited.

David

[Mark Wallace]

I use either zones or the fill tool as mentioned in the above.

Fills work great for sub-areas within zones.

Don't forget slab areas and roof areas included in the 'schedules' are another under utilitized feature. Can quickly tally multi-story, multi area buildings.

Mark

ArchiCAD 12 2523 USA Full + 11, 10, 9 & 7, Mac G5 Dual 2.3 Ghz, 1.5 Gb OSX.4.11, HP T1100, Epson R1800

Mark R. Wallace AIA