How to calculate in a schedule the external wall surface (for painting)?

[LucaLeo]

Hi everyone,

I’m new to Archicad and I can’t find a simple and correct way to get, in a wall schedule, the total external wall surface of the building in square meters.

My goal is to create a schedule that tells me how many external surfaces will need to be painted.

I have already tried several schedule fields (such as Wall Surface Area, External Face Surface Area Gross/Net), but the values I get don’t match:

• even in simple models (e.g. a 4×4 m room with a height of 2.70 m) the calculated surfaces don’t correspond to the expected mathematical value;

• in some cases the external surfaces are smaller, because Archicad subtracts the wall thickness at the intersections of corner walls;

 

Question:

👉 What is the correct method to make Archicad calculate the net external wall surface, with openings subtracted and internal parts excluded, so that the schedule gives me the real value of the surfaces to be painted?

Should I set up Zones, use a particular property, or is there a specific schedule field I am missing?

Sorry if this sounds like a basic question, but since I’m new to Archicad I can’t figure it out and it’s driving me crazy.

For clarity, I’m also attaching a simplified model (not my actual project, which is larger): I’m using it just for testing and to manually check the surface calculations.

Thanks a lot to anyone who can help!

Operating system used: Windows 11

 

[mthd]

A very basic simple calculation like this shouldn’t be so difficult just to obtain the total external wall area painting surface of a building. 

If zones are used to obtain this information why not create an external perimeter zone plane that touches the external face that can extract this information from the model ? Of course you would need it to calculate the external reveals of openings too for painting area.

QTO (Quantity Take Off) is very weak inside Archicad and needs much attention and development for real world applications.

We shouldn’t need endless ad-ons !

Thats why I am happy to send a DWG file right into Chief Architect and rebuild a basic model for QTO. That will also auto build framing for me and create an XL spread sheets, cut lists and schedules. For residential construction and QTO this tool is absolutely awesome.

[LucaLeo]

Thanks, I'll check now,