Space Design Area - %a% and $area

Dear Al,

I noticed two problems:

1. The %a% and $area attribute doesn't work or I'm doing something wrong.

2. Area of non-rectangular objects is calculated wrongly (sample attached).

Regards

Gregory

Attachments:

Area_Test_GM.png, 54 KB

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 22, 2012 at 7:38am

Before you can use the %a% or $area attribute, you have to tell us which face is to be used as the area.

See: http://www.renderplus.com/wk/SpaceDesign_Area_w.htm

We assumed that most components would have several faces, and that for 3D components, we needed to know which face to use as the "area". Will this work for you, or should we add up the area of all the faces in a component if no face is marked as the "area face"?

Your other calculation of area = length * depth will only work for rectangular objects.

Specifying Faces to use for areas

Use Layer Name

Place the face in a special layer:

If you place a face in the layer _SD_AREA within a component or group, it will use that face (including scaling) to determine the area of the Component or Group

Identify face in existing component

To define and use areas for a component:

Add a new attribute, and use %a% in its calculation.
(Or %a-m% for square meters, %a-cm% for square centimeters or %a-f% for square feet.)
After placing your component in a model, right click on it and select Define Area
Select a face in the component to be used as the area.

Note: This feature will only work if a single face in the component can be used to calculate the area.

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Permalink Reply by GTM on April 22, 2012 at 2:00pm

Dear Al,

I understand that only one face can be used to determined the object area.

1. Mainly we will use any horizontal faces to calculate individual room's floor area.

(the single horizontal face would be changed to a Component and called for example 'Flat1-Bedroom1', Flat1-Bedroom2, Flat1-Kitchen, Flat1-LivingRoom etc).

We could use the Define Area each time but if that could be automated and assigned automatically to any single horizontal face changed into a Group or Component that would help to get room data schedule instantly.

2. There is also a need to calculate 'real' roof area (total area of all slopes). In this instance we could use the Define Area as well but if that would be automated as the floors above and get the TOTAL 'REAL' AREA of the ROOF it would help (some hypothetical sample attached).

The bottom line is that if we would define any component or group which contains only a single face the Define Area would be assigned automatically.

Regards

Gregory

Attachments:

SpaceDesign_RoofTest.png, 15 KB

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Permalink Reply by GTM on May 10, 2012 at 4:17pm

Al Hart said: 

 Specifying Faces to use for areas
Use Layer Name

Place the face in a special layer: 

If you place a face in the layer _SD_AREA within a component or group, it will use that face (including scaling) to determine the area of the Component or Group

Dear Al,

I have tried to use the layer _SD_AREA to calculate the area within Component or Group.

It doesn't work.

I tried:

- move the face to the layer _SD_AREA

- move the face with edges to the layer _SD_AREA

and none of them work.

Any reason?

Regards

Gregory