area calculations?

[Anonymous]

hope someone out there can help me. i'm confused about the fastest, easiest way to get an overall square footage. i have a slab drawn. is there any way to find out the square footage of this slab (equivalent to list in autocad)? or, should i draw a zone? but then, can you grab a node of the zone and stretch it (in case you misplace one node)? or is a fill the best way. sorry, might be a basic question, but i'm fresh. thanks.

[Anonymous]

The quickest way is to spacebar click (magic wand) a fill to the slab. (I assume you already know to turn on "Show Area Text" for the fill.)

A zone works also, but I prefer to use them when there are functions beyond just a quick area calc. Such as labeling the room or area, calculating the contents, etc.

[Anonymous]

thanks, that worked. only thing is, the fill went to the inside of the walls (even though the slab is on the outside edge of the walls), and for my purposes, i need the calculation to be to the outsie edge. any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

[Anonymous]

Click the edge of the slab, not the space inside the walls. The magic wand will search for any bounded region unless you click on an edge, which will apply the result to the element.

[Anonymous]

got it, thanks!

[Aussie John]

sometimes it helps to actually select the element first before you to copy with magic wand

[Laszlo Nagy]

You can also get area information about the Slab with the Element Information Palette. With this you do not have to create a Fill to find out its area.