Calculate the Building Area

You can calculate the surface areas of the flats and total floor area for each floor of a building. The program will calculate the areas based on the exterior walls. Areas where room height as determined by the ceiling is below 1600 mm are not included in the surface area calculation. The surface areas are displayed in a table which you can place anywhere you like in the floor plan.

  1. Select Output | Zone | Building Area.
  2. Select the drawing-model pairs from which the surfaces are calculated.
  3. If the building has both log and framed exterior walls, select the walls by clicking them one by one, and select the Confirm function.
  4. Edit text properties.

    Text Properties (2D)

  5. Click a location for the text in the floor plan.
Note:

  • The program will mark the floor areas in the drawing as hatches on their own layers:

    • Flat area hatch on layer 57.
    • Floor area hatch on layer 58.
    You can check the area by making the layers visible with the Select Layers from List function on the tool strip. You can move points on the hatch's outline, and the area displayed in the table will be updated.
  • If you move the walls of the building, you can update the changes in the areas either by moving the points on the hatch's outline or by reselecting the function.
  • The object type of the areas is Additional materials. You can add points to the hatch's edge line, or add a hole to the hatch by using the editing functions of additional materials.
  • You can leave a room area out of the total floor area by editing the room's data.
  • Surface area calculation rules are defined in the keyword group BDSXX with the following keywords:
    • area_calc_sets - defines the surface areas to be calculated.
    • area_calc_param - defines the calculation rules.
  • By default, the area is presented with a half square meter (half square feet in imperial dimensioning system) precision. You can change the precision by changing the value of the keyword calc_build_area_precision in the BDSX keyword group. The keyword can have the following values:
    • 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - Defines the number of decimals. For example, calc_build_area_precision= 2 sets the precision to two decimals.
    • 0.5 - Defines 0.5 square meter (half square feet in imperial dimensioning system) precision.
    • 1.5 - Defines the precision as follows: areas less than 100 m² are displayed with 0.5 square meter precision, other areas with one square meter precision as a whole number.