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  • GTM May 17, 2012 at 7:36am

    Al,

    Thank you. It works! As you said _SP needs to be changed to _SD.

    _SD_AREA seems more natural.

    PS. Dear other users please note that the attribute is case sensitive - it has to be _SD_AREA

    Regards

    Gregory

  • Render Plus May 17, 2012 at 3:17am

    Gregory - is there still a problem with this?

    If so, can you upload a small model with a component where the area is not being calculated?

    Thanks,

    Al

  • GTM May 10, 2012 at 11:17am

    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

  • GTM April 22, 2012 at 9:00am

    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

    SpaceDesign_RoofTest.png

  • Render Plus April 22, 2012 at 2:38am

    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:

    1. 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.)
    2. After placing your component in a model, right click on it and select Define Area
    3. 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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