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Measure from a drawing

Take lengths and areas from the drawing's own lines, arcs, polylines and hatches by picking them, with exact arcs and holes, instead of tracing by clicks.

Written for TakeoffCraft 0.7. The same help is inside the app: press F1.

Measure drawing on the sheet bar of a DWG or DXF sheet takes the drawing's own objects as marks, so you do not trace them by clicks. A polyline's length, an arc's length, a circle's area and a hatch's area with its holes come out exact, from the arithmetic the takeoff uses for every mark.

Take objects as a linear or area item

  1. Make or click a linear or an area item under Items. The sheet needs a scale.
  2. Choose Measure drawing.
  3. Click the objects on the sheet to pick them, or drag a window round them: everything entirely inside it is picked. ⇧Shift adds a window to what is picked; click a picked object again to drop it. The bar shows the total: "6 runs: 108'-9 1/8" in all."
  4. Choose the add button, which names the number and the item, such as Add 6 to Edge (or press ReturnEnter). Each object becomes one mark of the item, in one undo step. EscEsc clears what you picked.

What each kind of item takes

  • A linear item takes lines, arcs, polylines, circles and splines by length. A closed shape counts by its perimeter. A hatch is left out: it has an area, not a length, and the bar says so.
  • An area item takes closed shapes: closed polylines, circles, 2D solids, and hatches with their holes. Open runs are left out, and the bar says so.

Exact, and nearly exact

Lines, arcs (any bulge), polylines with bulges and circles are exact: lengths and areas use the arc's radius and sweep, not a picture of it. Ellipses, splines and hatches whose boundary is made of edges are measured in chords of one degree or finer, which is within a hundredth of a percent for ellipses and a tenth for the rest; the bar says how many of what you picked are curves of this kind.

What it takes from where

  • Model: objects in model space. A layout: its own lines, and the model objects inside a viewport, scaled through it. An object that crosses a viewport's edge is not offered (it plots clipped); an object two viewports both show is taken once.
  • Only layers the sheet shows. Blocks are counted, not measured: see Count from a drawing. 3D polylines, meshes, solids and regions are not offered.