Finding Wall Areas

[Ed Wachter]

I'm hoping to have VW tell me the areas of exterior walls so I can enter the info into an Excel heating system sizing worksheet. I am currently using the Create Report command and choosing Preformatted Report, and then choosing Wall Area. Attached is a screen shot of what I'm seeing and why I'm confused. What units are being reported? The numbers shown do not make sense for either square inches or square feet.

 

Is this a good approach for finding areas of the exterior face of walls? My current project is in VW2022.

 

Thanks,

Ed

Wall Area Report.pdf

[E|FA]

I just did this for the exact same purpose a few weeks ago.  I found the quickest - though probably not best - way for me to get it done was to use the Extract Tool's extract surface mode on each of my exterior walls, which generates a closed polyline of the exterior surface area.  Once I had all the exterior wall surface poly lines, I selected all and got the total area from the OIP.

 

I'm sure there's a much better way to do this, but if you're on a permit intake deadline and need to get it done, it will work.

[Ed Wachter]

@E|FA Thanks Allan! It seems like you're always a couples steps ahead of me. I should just start sending my questions directly to you.

 

That is a nice method because it omits the window areas. I've got another week before the permit submittal. Maybe this thread will provide some other direction. Otherwise, I'll do what you did.

 

Thanks,

Ed

[Ed Wachter]

And it's fast too! It only took several minutes to get all the wall areas.

 

EW

[Tom W.]

7 hours ago, Ed Wachter said:

I am currently using the Create Report command and choosing Preformatted Report, and then choosing Wall Area. Attached is a screen shot of what I'm seeing and why I'm confused. What units are being reported? The numbers shown do not make sense for either square inches or square feet.

 

The WALLAREA_GROSS + WALLAREA_NET functions return the combined areas for both the interior + exterior faces of the Walls. See the worksheet function index:

 

https://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php/Worksheet_Functions

 

I'm not sure why your net area is greater than your gross area but I think I saw this before + there was a logical explanation for it but I can't remember what it was...! Can you post a file?

 

The units it reports in will be the units for the file. So if in the file length is set to feet then 0.604 would equal 7 1/4" + 0.625 would equal 7 1/2". Is that correct?

 

If you use Materials another approach might be to use the MATERIALSURFACEAREA function to return the surface area of whatever Material you're using on the exterior surface of the Walls. If you don't use Materials you could use COMPAREABYNAME to return the surface area of a specified component. Both these functions return the area of one side minus any holes.

 

 

[Ed Wachter]

Thanks @Tom W.. When I opened the file this morning the report made more sense (I don't know what changed). The Net and Gross areas were either the same (no windows), or the Net areas were smaller, apparently by an amount equal to the window area. And yes, the thickness now makes sense as expressed in fractions of a foot. Thanks for your help. I'll look for other reasons to use the Create Report command.

 

Regarding the area take-offs for for the energy load worksheet, I might still prefer the Extract Surface approach. Once those polygons were created I needed to reshape a couple of them to follow the heated envelope in a way that the walls do not, e.g. where a wall concealed a scissors truss.

 

Thanks,

Ed

 

 

 

[E|FA]

BTW, I learned the extract surface approach from @Jonathan Pickup as part of a workflow where the exterior siding is not a wall component, but is modeled separately.  This is really useful for panel siding.  Extract and then extrude to generate the siding area, and manipulate as needed to create the panel joints.

[Samuel Derenboim]

On 9/12/2023 at 7:11 PM, E|FA said:

I just did this for the exact same purpose a few weeks ago.  I found the quickest - though probably not best - way for me to get it done was to use the Extract Tool's extract surface mode on each of my exterior walls, which generates a closed polyline of the exterior surface area.  Once I had all the exterior wall surface poly lines, I selected all and got the total area from the OIP.

 

I'm sure there's a much better way to do this, but if you're on a permit intake deadline and need to get it done, it will work.

I did the same exact thing 2 years ago on a very complex project to calculate UA values for energy code requirements. Seems its the easiest method, and you can disconnect it from the master Bim file as well to create a separate set dedicated to a particular subfield

Edited September 14, 2023 by Samuel Derenboim

[Ed Wachter]

On 9/13/2023 at 2:47 PM, E|FA said:

BTW, I learned the extract surface approach from @Jonathan Pickup as part of a workflow where the exterior siding is not a wall component, but is modeled separately.  This is really useful for panel siding.  Extract and then extrude to generate the siding area, and manipulate as needed to create the panel joints.

Yes, I'll now use the extract surface method for siding also. Thanks again.

 

Ed

[Pat Stanford]

Not an answer for you, but VW2023 added a huge number of additional functions to worksheets to return additional information about Walls (and most other BIM objects).

 

Below is the help for one of the functions.  There a equivalent functions for 'left gross', 'left net', and then Right and Center equivalents. That can be applied to walls or wall components.

 

Help file is at: https://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=Worksheet_Functions#Specialized_for_Wall

 

SurfaceArea('openings left', [optional parameters])
Returns the area of the openings on the left surface of a wall or wall component.
'component name=...': If provided, only openings in the components with the given name will be included.
'component material=...': If provided, only openings in the components with the given material will be included.
'component=...': If provided, only openings in the given components will be included. Possible values are left, right, core or a number indicating the component index.
'min opening area=...' / 'max opening area=...': If provided, only openings with an area of at least min opening area and at most max opening area will be included. If the values don't have any units specified, square millimeters will be assumed.
'opening type=...': If provided, only openings created by objects with any of the given names will be counted. Multiple names can be delimited by a semicolon.
'exclude opening type=...': If provided, openings created by objects with any of the given names will not be counted.
=SurfaceArea('openings left') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'min opening area=0.5 sq m') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component, but ignoring any openings under 0.5 square meters.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'min opening area=0.5 sq m', 'max opening area=1 sq m') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component, but ignoring any openings under 0.5 square meters or over 1 square meter.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'opening type=Window') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component, but only taking openings created by "Window" plug-in objects into account.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'exclude opening type=Window') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component, but ignoring any openings that are created by "Window" plug-in objects.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'opening type=Window;WinDoor 6.0') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the wall or wall component, but only taking openings created by "Window" or "WinDoor 6.0" plug-in objects into account.

=SurfaceArea('openings left', 'component=core') returns the total area of openings on the left side of the core component of the wall.

 

[Tom W.]

@Pat Stanford how does one know when new functions are added + what they are? (Other than going through the new list + checking it against the previous one). How often are new functions generally added? Thanks

[Pat Stanford]

New functions are added with basically every version of VW.  But VW2023 was a much bigger year than most.

 

I have requested that the WS Function Reference page have Year added to the information so we know how far back they go, but so far no luck.