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Using worksheets to calculate floor area totals


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I've looked at the manuals and done a couple of searches on the forum, but I haven't been able to find information on how to tally floor areas in a worksheet. I don't see floor objects listed as one of the object types that can be included under "Create Report...", but I assume there's some relatively simple way to accomplish this. I do have floor objects in my model -- can I use these to obtain overall areas on a worksheet? If so, how, and if not, what's the easiest way to do it?

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Yeah I do it on all my jobs now.

In your worksheet pick a row and change from spreadsheet to database.

In criteria:

List objects whose:

Then in the header of the row just use the equation =AREA

you can use the =SURFACEAREA to give you the total surface area (EG for a cube the area of all 6 sides)

Edited by CS1
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Unfortunately, as you can see in the attached image, even thou I only have around 7 floors, because I have many Design Layer Viewports the: "Objects that meet the criteria" says 129. This is because it Multiplies the number of objects by the number of viewports that that floor is shown on.

You have to click "More Choices" and add:

List objects whose:

List objects whose:

List objects whose:

List objects whose:

List objects whose:

List objects whose:

etc depending on how many floors you have.

or Im pretty sure if all your floors were classed the same hopefully you could use

List objects whose:

Hope that helps

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Thanks CS1, that seems to work -- only odd thing is that it seems to give it to me in square inches. If I format the cell as "Dimension Area", it labels the number as "sq ft", but still displays the number of square inches. When I manually divide the number by 144 it comes out to the right area. I guess one workaround is to enter "=AREA/12" in the database field...

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Yeah sure thing, Im pretty sure the area unit is controlled by the Document Settings.

I use a PC so not sure where to find it on a Mac, but try:

File > Document Settings > Units > and change the format there from inches to feet or whatever

As far as the deicmal places go there are a lot of formatting things you can do to each cell or groups of cells.

Try selecting a cell or group of cells then right click, then select format cells.

You will see 5 options.

Number/Alignment/Font/Border/Patterns

If you go to number, then click Decimal you can change the number of deicmal places (top-right), and you can also enter a trailer, for example you could type in: mm?. (sorry I work in metric)

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Yup, you're exactly right -- I figured it out right after I posted that question. What's odd is that even with the Units preference set to "square feet" (in the Document Settings), the Worksheet still gives a total in square inches. Formatting the cell to "Dimension Area" doesn't recalculate the number (divide by 144), but rather still shows the value in square inches while adding the suffix "sq ft". Seems like a bug.

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Yeah that does sound odd, I work in metric so havent really noticed it because my prefs are always set to millimetres and for worksheets I just use =AREA/10000 etc I can tell quickly looking at the values that they are too long so I just chuck an extra 0 on the end of the equation.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi all,

yes this is a bug in the AREA function. We recommend the use of CRITERIAAREA that was introduced to solve that problem.

Also VOLUME and SURFACEAREA should be replaced with CRITERIAVOLUME and CRITERIASURFACEAREA.

Hugues

NNA

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi Markus,

If all you need is the total area of all floor objects, then you don't need to create a database. You can use this function in a spreadsheet cell.

=CRITERIAAREA(ST=FLOOR)

Hugues

NNA

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Thanks Hugues, sounds like a good approach. Is there a way to combine CRITERIAAREA with other criteria, so that I can separate out floor objects on different layers and/or classes? I'm somewhat familiar with the way that you can combine lots of criteria for a database row, but not how you might do it for a spreadsheet cell. And CS1, I still wish President Carter had succeeded in convincing us U.S. boneheads to finally join the rest of the world (with the notable exception of Liberia and Myanmar) in using the metric system...

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Yes of course you can combine criteria in worksheet criteria functions.

For example,

=CRITERIAAREA((ST=FLOOR) & (L='Design Layer-1') & (C='class1'))

give you the areas of floors of 'class1' that are on 'Design Layer-1'.

You can use the Paste Criteria command to build and insert the criteria into your function.

It seems like CRITERIAAREA and some other new functions are missing in the documentation. Thank you for pointing this out. I'll make sure that they are documented in the next version.

Hugues

NNA

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Markuskolb:

In VW, go up to "help" > "vectorworks help" then in the search field enter: Additional Worksheet Operations.

That should help you on your way.

PS in regards to your earlier reply, I have never had to learn Imperial, I would be lost if I had to use it. If your speaking to the president any time soon you can pass on that CS1 says metric is good :)

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