AutoCAD Measuring Tools

When receiving drawings from colleagues you might want to query the drawing, be it distances, angles or areas. Measuring the angle and distance is pretty simple. Select the appropriate tool and click on 2 points (for the distance) or select 2 lines which are not parallel to get the distance.

When it comes to measuring area there is a very specific order that needs to be followed.

To access the measuring tools, go to the utilities panel on the home tool and click on the drop-down to access the various measuring tools.

There are 5 different ways to measure.

• Distance – this can be vertical, horizontal or aligned
• Radius – this measures the radius or diameter of a circle or arc
• Angle – this measures the angle between 2 lines
• Area – single area of enclosed object, accumulate area or subtracting an area from another
• Volume – the volume of an enclosed 3D object

Using distance, radius and angle are pretty simple as I have commented on earlier. A more disciplined approach is needed when using the area measuring tool.

After selecting the area command you can start measuring by selecting the endpoints of the line to create the enclosed green area below. In the command line, you will see that you also have the subcommand to select an object. This will help get the area more easily as it will just be a one-click affair. For that to work, the line needs to be a polyline and that is created either with the join or polyline edit command.

The add and subtract subcommand is a bit more rigid in its execution. For the add command, the following steps need to be taken

1. Execute the Area command
2. Click Add in the command line
3. Click Object in the command line
4. Select the object on screen
5. Select any other objects on screen to continue adding their areas
6. Press enter

For the subtract command the above steps can be used to add areas as well and then execute the following commands to subtract areas

1.  Click Subtract in the command line
2. Click Object in the command line
3. Select the objects on the screen to subtract
4. Press enter

This will then give you the accumulative value for the area.