zone areas off by 1/2 in plan

[Erika Epstein]

Some of my zones are off by 1/2. Using zone identifier 2 notice that the great room area in the stamp is half that of the area shown in the "Update zone window". When I check the SF area using the fill tool and by hand, the "Update zone window" is the correct one.

This happens here and there in all the files. It seems to be related to when I have drawn the perimeter either by tracing the outline of the space or using the magic wand.

Fortunately I/S is using the correct figure for the various schedules.

Is there a setting I am missing in the zone stamp or is this a bug?
Can anyone else duplicate this?

thanks

[Laszlo Nagy]

Erica,
See my attached picture, I reproduced your issue there.
I think it has to do with the fact that your Great Room is 11 ft high, the other two are 9 ft high and you probably have the setting in Options\Preferences\Zones... to deduct 50 percent of it below a certain room height and this causes the difference.
If you turn off that deduction in Options\Preferences\Zones... or set the limit to a greater height (such 12 ft) it should be OK.

[Erika Epstein]

Laszlo,
Hmm. When you unchecked what did it show correctly the area in the plan?

Unfortunately I am not sure how to correct it.
On that same project when I have 2 zones one for heat cooled(Living area) and the other for garage both set to 11' high and with the upper zone limit turned off I am still getting this problem. Same for earlier screenshot.

Turning both of the zone height limits off (unchecking) gave same result.

What should I be checking or unchecking?
Note again that in the zone update screen the areas are shown correctly, it is just in the plan that the areas is shown incorrectly. I couldn't find anywhere in the zone identifier 2 zone stamp that seemed to affect this.

What am I doing wrong?


Also, do you know what it appears to ooze into the arched areas between rooms when I did not define the zone that way?
thanks

[Erika Epstein]

another screen shot

[Laszlo Nagy]

Erika,

Check my screenshot.
See if any area get reduced from you Zone by reason of Walls, Fills etc. It may be it is set there to reduce the area of the Zone by 50 %.
If that does not help, it might be a good idea for you to save as PLA a portion of your file which has the problem, and post it here zipped so I or some of the other guys can check it out.
I have no idea about the oozing thing. A zipped file portion would help here as well.

[Erika Epstein]

Laszlo,
I have been sitting here in California, waiting all day for you to wake up in Hungary to figure out the answer, and...
I figured it out!

First let me say that I verified this 50% error with all zone stamps no matter what I had set in options, preferences, zones. The error continued to show only in the placed zone stamps, calculations I/S were correct. Finally I looked through the manual (on-line help) and at last in the Zone Default Settings and found there on the area calculation tab that one can decrease the zone by a __percentage which is filled in at 50%. !!! replacing this with "0" after selecting all placed zones and then updating zones corrected the error. Finally.

WHY? why if all else on this tab is greyed out from other settings is this here?
Is the default to have it set to 50%?
I checked a file from another office and that one had 0% entered here. So it seems not, which makes me wonder how Laszlo and I both ended up with it set to 50%.

This other file came from a mac and I am on PC. What platform(s) are you on? [your signature does not say ]

Thank you for all your help and inspiration

[Anonymous]

this discussion is exactly why i will never trust zones for area calcs. in this instance the sizes were such that the user could see there was a problem. on some projects you might not immediatley sense this. if you are using areas to then do construction cost calcs (as i do often) you could end up with a real disaster.

in my opinion fills for areas are the only way to go.

donald mac donald
mac G-5 V-9

[Laszlo Nagy]

Erika wrote:
Laszlo,
I have been sitting here in California, waiting all day for you to wake up in Hungary to figure out the answer, and...
I figured it out!

First let me say that I verified this 50% error with all zone stamps no matter what I had set in options, preferences, zones. The error continued to show only in the placed zone stamps, calculations I/S were correct. Finally I looked through the manual (on-line help) and at last in the Zone Default Settings and found there on the area calculation tab that one can decrease the zone by a __percentage which is filled in at 50%. !!! replacing this with "0" after selecting all placed zones and then updating zones corrected the error. Finally.

WHY? why if all else on this tab is greyed out from other settings is this here?
Is the default to have it set to 50%?
I checked a file from another office and that one had 0% entered here. So it seems not, which makes me wonder how Laszlo and I both ended up with it set to 50%.

This other file came from a mac and I am on PC. What platform(s) are you on? [your signature does not say ]

Thank you for all your help and inspiration

You are welcome and I am glad this was solved. This was my guess that for some reason the area is reduced by 50% in the Settings Dialog.
I do not think this is the default setting but got that way in some other way. I guess the safest is to just uncheck the Reduce by checkbox so nothing gets deducted.
I am on PC but this issue was not platform-specific, could have happened on either side.

I agree with Donald that there is a lot more factors involved with Zones than with simple Fills, but it has a much greater potential as well at making one's life much easier.

[Stephen Dolbee]

Thank you Erika for posting this topic. This prompted me to check my area calcs, and I found some (but not all) to be off. After unchecking everything in options/prefs/zones, my areas are now accurate.

Thanks again,

Steve