Area function gives wrong result

[JamesP]

Hello Guys,

 

I have been away from AutoCAD for a year or so and now that I am back I can’t remember some of the simple stuff. Never was much good anyway.

 

I have a simple rectangle 17.619units x 1.499units = 26.41units². The units are supposed to be meters.

 

Why does the area function (Home, Utilities, Measure, Area) give a result of 423.3422? I don’t know what units this is in.

 

I have tried this on several rectangles and all come out with a strange result.

 

This is a drawing I have inherited. When I do the same thing in a new drawing or one of my own drawings the result is correct.

 

I look forward to any observations.

[ReMark]

It could be that the area is being expressed in decimal square inches because the original template used was based on imperial units.

 

You want to see the results expressed in metric units thus you should be using a metric drawing template.

 

You can can drawing units via the command line by invoking the -DWGUNITS command.

[Dadgad]

ReMark is right on the button, -dwgunits is definitely the way to sort it out.

Assuming that it was available in 2009?

-dwgunits will identify the database drawing units in the drawing,

and allow you to change those units, and all other related variables such as insertion units,

just read the prompts carefully, and if your text window doesn't open after you start the command, hit F2

to show your test window. You should be able to see about 8 or 10 lines of text

when running this command, so you can really see what is going on, and all the options.

[JamesP]

Thanks for the input ReMark and Dadgad

 

Well I have solved the problem – much to my embarrassment!

 

It’s always the simple things that get you.

 

As I said I inherited this drawing, and I had not worked on CAD for about a year. When I opened it I immediately started work attempting to take off some areas and as you know the results were strange and frankly I am still not sure why – but I had not realised that I was working in LAYOUT.

 

As soon as I changed to MODEL all is as expected.

 

So now it’s just an academic question – why would I not get the correct results in layout?

 

I have tried to run DWGUNITS, but I get an unknown command error both in Layout and Model. I’m working with AutoCAD 2011.

 

Thanks again and I hope this thread might assist someone in the future.

[ReMark]

The command has to be preceded by a dash just like Dadgad and I indicated. So it is -DWGUNITS. Got it?

 

Measuring in a layout you'll get paper space dimensions which are not the same as model space dimensions. However, if you dimension in a layout the dimensions will reflect the true size of the object back in model space IF you use your OSnaps when making picks on your geometry.