That would be useful for us in early stages before we have a SketchUp model in progress.
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??? why don’t you just do your task in Sketchup… you have all the tools there?
I don’t think so, you can do it on sketchup easily, even on an early stage just create an schematic plane and skp will show you the area if you send the model to layout the label tool will show the area by default. You don’t need to draw on layout and get the measures there, that’s not Layout’s purpose.
Create a material for each area category you need and paint your floors (or copies of them) with those. Right-clicking each material in the In Model materials browser and selecting Area from the context menu gives you the area for the material. Paint only one side of the faces.
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I agree with LO area tags request. Having areas being retrieved from model is not that simple.
Area of the room isn’t always the floor area, as you might have different floors, or textures on the floor, you might have drawn planks in your model, or have a bathtub that excludes part of the floor.
I use section cut faces and generate an area group for each room in a plan. Then I can create scenes that only displya these area groups, and finally tag them using layout tags with area autotext.
Very convuluted.
I would like to be able to use a shape in LO as a tag over my model. Not always, but sometimes this would be a good solution. Especially if it would use PID to adhere to geometry in the model.
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This is a nice idea. I could see my self using this tip but it doesn’t really address my feature request
I hear you but its basically a question of preference. As I said, there are times that having basic calculations available from LO would be beneficial.
(The root of my problem is that there is someone in our office who does a lot of preliminary/prospecting type work but doesn’t have the skills to work in Sketchup or 3d model space. We don’t have to time or interest in teaching them how to use this stuff either. But they could theoretically go into layout and draw a shape and determine how much usable space is available, for instance)
Ok Noted ! 
I have also had to manage staff like that…
I am sure you know your processes well… just personally I hate seeing data dead ends…
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Actually I think LO would greatly benefit from an Entity Tray (eg Property) that summaries any selected entity in LO… be it a SU or LO entity…
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Which SU entity would you pick to retrieve areas from?
Well actually… although I mentioned that in my initial response I edited that out as you can already extract and area from an surface in Layout with the label tool… I thought that was limited only to a component but can use the label tool to select a single surface in a group or primitive entity.
As for the ENTITY INFO tray in LAYOUT… it should show all the relevant properties of the selected item in LO… eg layer, tag, material, dimensions.
Like this example from QCAD - so if the entity (SU or LO) had an area value you copy either manually copy paste it from this properties tray or even better automate it with an
Maybe this is what the NEW TRIMBLE CAD package will have ?
PS this is also a powerful interface tool for filtering / editing in bulk entities with a document…
Maybe not the best example but Draftsight subscription ran out today and I am rolling over to QCAD and only have cursory knowledge of its interface ATM…
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I use the Autotext tool in LO to tag areas. However, this implies having the right face in Sketchup to Tag. That face is never automatic in the model as it usually never exists. What I endup doing is creating area faces that exist only for areas. Honestly, these are cumbersome to create and maintain in sync with model changes. If I had an area Tag in LO, for small projects I could spend less time tagging areas, while in big projects I could keep using the current method I have.
Having both would help us a lot.
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Yep, I can understand your need… the entity tray I am suggesting would also give you the area of LO entities… I tend to model everything in SU… including accurate finish boundaries so can quantify areas and values within the model…
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If you do that for the whole building you’ll be better off using BIM software than sketchup.
That someone might be able to use the perimeter and square measurements functionality in the Trimble Connect 2D viewer, where you can easily set and calibrate the first measurement on a PDF, and then do the area’s:
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now that’s an idea. I can look into using that more often for simple tasks.
I tend to forget that this exists
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Layout is just not the place for this. Even at the earliest conceptual stage. Import your sketches into SU. Get them to scale and draw faces. Faces can push areas and reports generated. Also faces can be painted and areas reported by material.
Also consider something like BlueBeam? Not sure if it can calc areas, but I know many firms use it for takeoffs, etc.
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brought up the notion of an Entity Tray a couple of years (see my post below) - it’ll be wishful thinking that they implement this in LO and if they do, it’ll be so far down the road unfortunately.
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Of course. People across the industry love bluebeam but at this time we only need something like that for about 5% of our projects. Doesn’t make sense to get all of those licenses if we could just get this out of something we already won. and for the most part, it is very within our workflow to just get the areas we need from sketchup
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